


The Chat(s)

by Nym_P_Seudo



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Complete, Gen, Time Loop, Tragedy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-13 01:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 38,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5688697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nym_P_Seudo/pseuds/Nym_P_Seudo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time is a capricious thing. Given enough of it, a child can become a demon. So, does it work the other way around? As the strange eons march by, can a demon cobble together humanity from scraps and spare parts? Or is it just a game to pass the time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Work in progress.
> 
> Please pardon me if there is a format complication. I am not very familiar with this website.
> 
> The following is a story I've been working on for some time. It was spawned from my affection for the Sans boss fight in Undertale. Fan fiction is not something I generally pursue, but I felt a compulsion to give it a try. I'd appreciate any feedback you could give me regarding the story. The ultimate goal of this is to improve as a writer. Tell me where I lost you, where it didn't make sense, or where you feel it could be improved. Much appreciated.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

_ **Part 1** _

 

Sans clutched the pocket watch deep in his jacket, and drew it out every few seconds to check it. It was an ugly, gunmetal thing, with screws and rivets protruding from it at odd angles. It wasn’t digital, and had no hands or face numbers. A numerical value, like a car’s odometer, was displayed on the front. 0005.

_one for each finger_ , he thought.

Gaster had given him the watch centuries ago. From that moment forward, Sans had kept it on his person at all times. He’d been warned by Gaster to always trust the watch above everything. “When all else fails, the facts will be the only friends you have left.” Gaster’s words rang in Sans’ head truer than they ever had before.

Sans waited alone in the golden hallway for the child to make his supposed sixth appearance.

Eventually, the child rounded the corner and began lurching down the hall. Sans had seen this all before from the sidelines. The child moved with a mechanical drive, like one of Alphys’ bot prototypes. He was caked with dust and gripped a cooking knife so tightly that his knuckles were as white as Sans’.

Sans suppressed a shiver. He checked his watch one last time before stepping out of the shadows to block the child’s path.

“hey buddy. looks like you’ve been pretty busy.”

The pinpricks of red in the child’s eyes flared.

“you look a little frustrated.” Sans pretended to study the child’s face. “i’d say you have the expression of someone who’s died five times in a row.” He counted to five on his skeletal digits and rolled them into a fist. “one for each finger. huh, fancy that.”

The child’s face grew livid, and he took a step forward. He leveled the knife at Sans and bared his teeth. “Shut up.”

Sans took a grim satisfaction that the watch didn’t need tuning. “you sure about this, champ? last time i checked i was five and oh. i’m not a gambler, but the odds seem to be against you.”

“Shut up!” The child screeched and lunged, knife leading.

*****

                Sans checked his pocket watch and thought about Gaster. 0023. Sans’ porcelain smile grew genuine for a moment.

_i must be_ _better at this fighting thing than i first gave myself credit._

                He glanced down the hallway and quickly stamped out his growing hope that the child wouldn’t show. Now was not a time for hope. Only determination remained: his versus the kid’s.

                The child appeared and stormed past the golden pillars, straight towards Sans’ hiding place. Sans liked to think he felt a sense of déjà vu from it all, but he never could lie to himself. He emerged and adopted a defensive posture.

“let’s just get to the—”

                The kid hurled a rock at Sans’ skull and shadowed the attack to stab at his chest.

                Sans dodged the one-two and teleported back a few feet. Exhilaration made him talkative.

“well, that didn’t go according to plan. guess that means it never will, then?” He donned his most intimidating face. “say hi to sans number twenty-five for me.”

*****

                Sans looked down at his pocket watch. A shaft of light from the stained glass windows caught the edge of the casing and reflected into his eyes. He blinked several times, and then several more when he saw the number. His eyes weren’t lying. 0078.

                A trio of conflicting emotions clashed in his head. The first was an old friend: crushing, cosmic futility. He wondered how many more times this would go on. Seventy-eight was a respectable win streak, but the kid had to be picking up on his moves by now. He only had so many, and eternity was a long time to take notes. The second thought was of himself. Silly pride lightened his spirits by a single feather’s worth. He was crafting his own legacy in a loop in time. He didn’t want to be the one to break the chain and disappoint himself. The third was a muddy mixture of hatred and respect. The kid was damn persistent. Maybe even to the point of lunacy.

                The rhythmic clop of sneakers on tile drew Sans out of his brooding. The child approached him with a casual step. He took slow, sweeping views of the hallway and seemed to drink in the sights with relish. He feigned surprise when Sans revealed himself. “Hello Sans. I’m glad to see you’re okay after the last few rounds.”

                The child offered a sharp, toothy smile.

                Sans’ bones grew cold and he tried to keep the quake out of his voice. “that expression you’re wearing… you’re really kind of a freak, huh?”

                “Freak?” The child slowly cocked his head to an angle and Sans heard his neck pop. “If you were in my shoes, you’d take a few victory laps too, wouldn’t you? It’s only fair. It’s still seventy-five to three, anyways.

                Sans summoned his defenses and fell back.

                The child held his arms out wide and strode forward.

*****

                Sans rolled the watch in his jacket pocket and stared at the prophetic sigils that decorated the windows.

_at least we figured out what kind of “freedom” the angel was selling._

                He checked the watch and his mind caught in place, as if the gears of his thoughts had been jammed by a crowbar. He closed his eyes for ten long seconds then opened them again. 0287.

                “what?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Onward, to chapter 2! I hope this one proves to pique people's interest. If so, then tell me your thoughts on the matter. Feedback is always fun.

   

                Sans shook the pocket watch and listened for the rattle of loose mechanisms. Nothing. He stared hard at the number. 0291.

                He made a conscious effort to steady his breathing. It was just a number, he told himself. It didn’t mean anything to him, just to the kid. The train of thought crashed into a quagmire of fear.

_what does it mean to the kid, then?_

                “Are you just going to stand there?”

                Sans looked up and his soul leapt into his throat. The child was standing five feet in front of him.

                Sans teleported into another shadow and checked himself for injuries. There were none. He peeked out to get a glimpse, and the child was staring straight at him.

                The kid silently padded forward on bare feet and swung the knife by the wooden hilt like a pendulum.

                Sans held his breath and stepped out. He did his best to look threatening, but came across feeling like a scarecrow before a condor.

                “seems like we’ve been through this a few times. by the look on your face, i’d guess we’re nearing the three hundred mark.”

                The child gave an indulgent smile. “You’re a perceptive guy, Sans.” He took another step forward. “Hey, would you mind checking your watch for me? I’m curious what time it is.”

                Sans willed his Gaster blasters into existence and seared the hallway with beams of white.

                The child dodged like a lazy dancer, spending the bare-minimum energy to shift or bend out of the way.

                Scorch marks painted the ceiling, pillars, and floor, but the kid stood with a bored slant to his shoulders, completely unharmed.

                “you’ve been practicing,” Sans observed.

                The child lobbed the knife across the room to land beside Sans’ slippers. “Here.”

                Sans hastily kicked the knife behind a pillar. “too many failures, then? you finally giving up?” He began to sweat when he detected the panic in his own voice.

                The child’s smirk bubbled into a chuckle and then boiled over into great, heaving laughter. He hunched his shoulders and clutched at his stomach as his back shook.

                Sans was rooted to the tile.

                The child eventually righted himself and wiped stray tears from his red eyes. “A comedian to the very end. You always knew how to get a rise out of me.”

                The kid clenched his hands like claws and approached. “Try to keep me entertained this time.”

*****

                Sans woke in a standing position. His bones ached and a burning fatigue permeated his soul.

He tried to piece together the fragments of the fight. He’d used the last of his magic to slam the kid around. Had he done it? Was he past the loop? His thoughts hitched. Was the kid dead?

                Sans patted himself down, looking for the watch. His hands grew faster and more desperate as all his pockets came up empty. A small voice behind him spoke.

                “Oh four one six.”

                Sans spun around and nearly toppled. His magic was spent and his body barely responded.

                The kid was sitting behind him with his back resting against a pillar. He held Sans’ pocket watch and was trying to pry the metal seams apart with the knife.

“You’re a heavy sleeper. I’d say you’ve been out for at least nine hours.”

                Sans scanned the hall and tried to absorb the situation. It had been ravaged by the battle. Most of the windows were shattered and a fallen pillar had collapsed part of the ceiling. He tried to reach out towards his watch, but his arms were so heavy he could have sworn his jacket was made of lead.

                The child dropped the watch with disgust and it clattered onto the tile. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find a blowtorch, would you?”

                Sans ground his teeth and said nothing.

                The kid rose to face Sans. Purple weariness pooled beneath his eyes, but he was smiling. “Never-mind that. Who’s Gaster, anyways? You mention him sometimes near the end, but I never get a straight answer. Was he someone I met on the way down here? Like Pap?”

                Sans scraped the remnants of his magic together, summoned a blaster, and fired.

                The kid was leaping to the side almost before it appeared. “Ha! Not this time.” He closed in and tackled Sans to the ground, almost playfully. He sat cross-legged on Sans’ chest and beamed down at him. “For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that you’d wake up. I always put you down after you dozed off as a matter of course. But I like the idea of having a post-battle chat.”

                Sans started to struggle, but gave up. There was no denying it, even without the child on top of him he wouldn’t have been able to stand. “welp, you got me, kid. i’m not going anywhere.” His eyes grew hollow with contempt. “but what makes you think i’d chat with a murderer like you?”

                 The child shrugged his shoulders and twirled the knife. “I dunno. Boredom? You’ve got the watch; you know how many times this has played out.”

                Sans dearly wished he had the ability to spit in the kid’s face. “well that’s a surprise. i suppose even psychotic butchers get tired of the same routine.”

                The child absently carved a pattern into Sans’ coat like he was an old tree stump. It didn’t pierce to the bone, but it brought a few beads of sweat to Sans’ skull.

                “There’s just not a whole lot else on my calendar.” The kid counted on his fingers with the flat of the blade. “Without Flowey, Undyne, or Pap, I don’t have a lot of conversation partners.”

                “burn in hell.”

                “Good talk.”

                The knife plunged straight for Sans’ eye socket.


	3. Chapter 3

Sans checked his watch and exhaustion washed over him. 1015. He ran a hand across his skull.

_there’s no way. i couldn’t have lasted this long. he’s just toying with me at this point._

                Sans leaned against a pillar and slowly slid to the ground. He tried to remember the last time he’d slept. It had been sometime before the kid’s rampage started two days ago.

                His body started to shut down, and his mind began sinking into the dreamscape. It felt good. Maybe he’d just sleep through this fever dream and wake up in a world where he still had a family.

                A sound jarred him from his rest and sent a burst of adrenaline through him. He checked the hallway. The kid was making a slow advance.

                The child moved like he was injured, or lame; his bare feet shuffled irregularly along the checkered tiles. His head hung low as he fished through his pockets. Possessions cracked against the ground as he made his way. An empty gun, a brass locket, and even the knife left a messy trail behind him.

                Sans collected himself and teleported in front of the kid.

                The child seemed genuinely startled at Sans’ appearance. “Oh… hey, Sans. It’s been a while.” The child’s red gaze drifted around the hallway, but never settled on Sans. “How’s uh, life been?”

                Sans’ fists shook in his jacket pockets. “life? life’s been grand, buddy. well, it _was_ grand a few days ago, up until someone decided to murder every living thing in the underground. then it became a lot less grand.”

                The kid turned his head and rubbed his temple with his fingers. “Yeah… days.” He let out a little half-chuckle.

                Sans erupted. He conjured every ounce of his magic into one colossal burst, and filled the hallways with blasters. The grinning skulls covered all conceivable angles, enclosing the child in a dome.

                Through the gaps, Sans could see the kid staring at his toes. He mouthed a single word Sans couldn’t identify before white engulfed the room.

*****

                Sans jolted awake and shielded his eyes. Light poured out of the stained glass windows above him. He climbed to his feet and braced himself against a pillar. How long had he slept? He checked his watch. 1037. It was still the same as before he dozed off. He thought for a second and realized it didn’t actually matter. He suddenly regretted not having a real watch.

                Doubt crawled through him. Had the kid just walked past while he slept? He gathered his magic and portaled to the throne room. Asgore was inside, pacing a circuit through the carpet of buttercups.

                Sans portaled back to the golden hallway and wiped sweat off his skull.

_maybe this is normal, part of the routine. maybe the kid is always late._

He looked down at his watch showing quadruple digits.

_no._

*****

                Sans crunched through the empty streets of Snowdin. He assumed the metal watch in his hand was cold, but he couldn’t feel it. 1143. The buildings were all dark. Except for the shop the kid had burglarized, it all seemed idyllic, like everyone was just sleeping off a long day.

                Sans averted his eyes as he passed by his own house. Now was not the time for that. The kid had to be found.

                After two days of waiting, Sans had concluded the kid was up to something. It had taken Sans hours to collapse the golden hallway behind him, but it was worth denying the child an escape route. The hunt had been fruitless. The Core, Hotlands, and Waterfall had all been empty. Only Snowdin remained.

Sans halted in front of the decorated tree in the middle of town. The colorful baubles on the limbs glimmered dully in the ambient light. Presents were scattered about its base. Sans nudged one with a foot and thought about Pap.

                A flicker illuminated something in the corner of Sans’ eye. He glanced about and saw candlelight reaching through the tinted windows of Grillby’s. He teleported to the heavy, wooden door and cracked it open. A voice murmured from within. Sans swung the door wide and stepped inside.

                The kid sat at the bar across the room and rested his elbows on the counter. He slid an overturned glass from hand to hand and spoke incessantly. Every few seconds he would pause mid-sentence and look over to the empty bar stool beside him.

                “So that’s it. I’m trapped between two oblivions.” He turned his head and chuckled. “Yeah.”

                Sans took a few heavy steps to make himself known, but the child didn’t even twitch an ear.

                “A private hell I built just for myself… Looks like you got your wish, minus the burning.” The kid rested his forehead on the counter and let out a tattered sigh.

                Sans slammed his fist on a table and the child practically jumped out of his chair. He whipped about, and his red pupils locked onto Sans. The kid’s brow furrowed with confusion, and he did a double take to the empty stool. His expression went slack.

“Oh…”

                Sans lifted his arms in an elaborate shrug. “so, what’s the deal here, bud? you suddenly lose interest two feet from the finish line?”

                The child was silent. He waved a tentative arm over the stool then pressed his fingers against his eyelids.

                Sans took another step. “because i’ve got to tell you, i’m not a fan of hide and seek.”

                The kid threw up a wavering grin. “Just taking a break this time around.”

                “oh, really? genocide not all it’s cracked up to be?”

                The child fiddled with the glass in his hands.

                “if you’re not happy with how things turned out, then i’ve got a little secret for you. i’m not exactly pleased with it either. in fact, you might even say i’m a little upset about it all.” Sans used his magic to hurl the loose tables and chairs against the walls. They exploded into kindling. “so why don’t you just use your power and reset to square one so i can have my brother back?”

                Panic gripped the kid’s face. “No! I wo—I can’t do that.”

                “you can’t? is that so?” Sans let his pupils fade and the emotion drain out of his voice. “here, pal. let me help you with that.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sans stood in front of the Snowdin library and stared up at the misspelled sign. For years, it had drawn a smirk out of him every time he saw it, but now it only hurt. The building was lit up like a spotlight. Every window glowed, casting a contrasting cheeriness into the desolate streets. Whatever his game was, the child wasn’t making much of an effort to hide it.

                Sans checked his watch. 2102.

_so much time lost. no—stolen._

                He walked inside.

                It was as pristine as always. He had expected to see knife marks in all the books and slashes on the walls, but everything was normal—as normal as it could have been.

                Last week’s newspaper rested on the reception counter. It consisted of nothing but crossword puzzles and word jumbles. Blotchy, red marker strokes filled in all the answers. The handwriting was clumsy and slanted.

                Sans began to stalk the rows of bookshelves. He readied his magic and turned each corner expecting an ambush. As he moved deeper inside, he began to hear a whispering voice. Its pitch shifted up and down as it spoke.

                Sans determined the direction of the sound and followed it to the back corner of the building. A little alcove filled with beanbag chairs budded off of the children’s reading section. Sans drew close enough to distinguish the words.

                “…and so the king set out to find the magic harp.” The voice dropped two octaves and then rose again, “’Maybe then I’ll have a good night’s sleep,’ said the king.”

                Sans silently ducked into the alcove. The kid was inside with his back to the entrance, sitting half-sunken into a beanbag. He held an illustrated children’s book in his arms and read aloud.

                “The king took the harp with him to bed and it played a beautiful lullaby. Pretty soon…” The child turned the page and made a deep snoring noise. “…he was fast asleep. He slept and he slept and he slept…”

                Sans heard a sporadic pattering sound, like water leaking from a pipe.

                “All the king’s subjects gathered to wake him. They tried shouting and singing and poking, but he slept on. One day, the queen had an idea to wake the king. She baked the sweetest-smelling butterscot—” The kid choked on the word. He took a breath and tried again. “…the sweetest-smelling buttersc—” He closed the book and rested his forehead in his hands.

                Sans rapped his knuckles against the alcove wall and the child jerked to face him. Deep rivulets of tears ran down the child’s cheeks and flanked his shocked expression.

Sans forgot what he was going to say.

                They stared at each other for a heartbeat before the kid turned away and began wiping at his face.

                Sans tried to process, but his thoughts stuck like tar. “so, you— this of all things— i—”

                The kid looked at the moisture collecting on the book cover. “You’re early. Funny how a single digit-change on the watch alters your choices.”

                Sans bristled. “how do you know about the watch?”

                “I’ve been on this merry-go-round a long time, Sans. I know most of its ins and outs by now.” The child placed the book atop a stack beside the beanbag. It consisted of more children’s books, a novel, and a theoretical physics textbook.

                Sans spun on his heels and began stomping out of the building. It was all too absurd. The place was making him claustrophobic; he couldn’t think.

                Sans reached the door and grabbed the knob. He felt a slight tug on the back of his jacket. He turned to look into the kid’s pleading, red eyes.

                “Don’t go.”

                Disgust and some unknown emotion thrashed about Sans’ ribcage. They fought like feral beasts.

                A question slipped through Sans’ clenched teeth. “what are you?”

                A miniscule smile touched the child’s face. “I’m Chara.”

                Disgust triumphed. Sans knocked the kid to the ground with an outthrust arm and took a step closer to the door. “i didn’t ask who you were, i asked _what_ you were. you’re not a monster, and you’re certainly not a human. are you a parasite? a demon?”

                The kid flinched at the word ‘demon’ as if struck. He averted his eyes to the purple carpet and nodded. “Something like that.”

                Sans couldn’t control the blue flare of hate in his eye. Killer-intent made his bones rattle.

                The kid just sat there.

                Sans’ mind see-sawed from one extreme to the other, but in the end he blasted the door from its hinges with his magic and stormed off into the dark.


	5. Chapter 5

Sans inched through the tall grass of Waterfall and cringed at every rustle he caused.

He took a blind step through some foliage and sank up to his the ankle in a puddle. He extracted his foot and took a look at the slipper. It was little more than a swollen, sodden lump. The other didn’t look much better. He growled and kicked them off.

_so much for subtlety._

Sans emerged into a cave and began clinking about the floor on bare bones. The sound ricocheted off into the distance like a light beam in a hall of mirrors.

He kept his magic eye open wide; the kid had to be nearby.

                He rounded a curve and spotted a figure farther along the path. It sat at the bank of a lethargic river and brandished a long rod.

                Sans ducked back behind cover and checked his watch. 2506. He stifled the apathy welling inside himself.

_it’s my job, after all. i’m judge, jury, and executioner._

                He stepped out and sauntered towards the figure.

                It was the kid, of course. There was nobody else left. He sat with his sweatpants rolled up to his knees and dipped his feet in the river. Thin wisps of algae and fallen leaves floated across the surface like figure skaters.

                Sans gauged the distance and positioned himself out of the kid’s striking range. He looked at the kid’s weapon and realized it was a fishing pole. It was faded and cracked with age, but the kid wielded it expertly. He sent a long cast out into the river and watched the lure bob in the slow current.

                “everybody needs a hobby, i suppose.”

                The kid didn’t move. “It’s a way to kill time.”

                Sans sneered. “makes sense. you’re an expert at that sort of thing.”

                The kid wedged the pole’s handle in a cluster of rocks and turned to give Sans a questioning look.

                “you know, killing.”

                The child leaned back to prop himself on his arms and sighed. “Walked into that one, didn’t I?”

                Sans drew his hands from his jacket pockets and clenched them by his sides. His voice grew icy and sharp. “let’s cut to the punch line. what are you doing here? is this some kind of game? i saw you kill undyne. i know what you’re capable of. there’s no way you could have failed this many times in a row.”

                The kid picked up a sharp rock and began scribbling in the dirt. He said nothing.

                Sans could see his own skeletal fists trembling. He took a step forward. “sorry if you’re hard of hearing, bud. i’ll say it again. what. are. you. doing.”

                The child continued scribbling. “Pepper spray. Buttercup. Galaga. Wing Dings.”

                Sans froze. Those had been all four of his secret passwords, all the way to ‘Wing Dings,’ meaning: trust this one.

                “where did you learn those? tell me!”

                The kid stood and brushed off the back of his sweatpants. “You told me.” He smiled sadly.

                Sans centered himself and shrugged. “come on, kid. you can’t expect me to buy that. you could have tortured that out of me, or spent a thousand loops guessing. from your side of the table, i’m an amnesiac. fool me once and you can fool me forever.”

                The child’s head dipped a little and an expression of immeasurable weariness washed across his face. “Why did you give these to me if you knew you wouldn’t even believe them?”

                The kid looked down as his scribbles. Sans drew closer to get a glimpse of them. They were mathematical calculations. The final value the kid had written down was ‘289.’

                “289 what?”

                “Years. The time I’ve spent in this loop.”

Sans hissed through his teeth. “what are you?”

                “I’m Char—I’m a parasite… or maybe a d—demon.”

                Sans lowered his guard by a millimeter. “why are you here? why did you do this?”

                A tug on the line made the fishing pole quiver. The child sat down and carefully reeled it in. The hook came up empty. He recast it and gazed into the water.

                “I was a child once, I think. A human child. I remember the sky and the sun, though it might just be _his_ memories.”

                “his?”

                The kid looked down at his body and clutched at his sweater. “This child, this… host.”

                “so you’ve been taking this kid on a joyride for almost three hundred years? who is he? is he conscious of what you’ve done?”

                The child shook his head. “No, Frisk has been asleep for a long time.”

                Sans dug his toes into the dirt and weighed his options. His hate screamed at him, telling him that it was a trap and to just blast the kid. Something else—curiosity or maybe resignation—told him it didn’t matter anymore. He had lost control of things a couple hundred years ago. Why not just hear the kid out?

                He rolled up his pant legs and plopped down beside the child on the river’s edge. He dunked his leg bones into the water, feeling nothing. He looked into the kid’s red eyes. “why did you kill my brother?”

                The kid looked down at his knees and clasped his hands together. Sans could see them quaking.

                “I did it because I could. Because it felt good.”

                Sans’ eyes hollowed out. “that was the answer i expected.”

                He started to rise, but the kid snaked an arm out to grab the hem of Sans’ coat. “Please. Let me explain… Please.”

                Sans stilled, but his eyes remained void and piercing.

                “I remember falling. I remember a family. There were four of us back then. We would gather by the hearth at night and listen to Dad tell stories while we ate butterscotch pie. Mom would tuck us in and read to us until we fell asleep.”

                “touching.”

                “I killed her—Toriel—Mom. Yesterday? Three hundred years ago?” The kid pressed his palms against his temples. “I just wasn’t thinking about it.”

                “everybody flubs and murders their family now and again, right? honest mistake.”

                “I died back then, long ago. Mom and Dad and Brother were all shouting, telling me to live. Then it went black. But I didn’t vanish, the world kept moving without me. They were like shadows projected on a wall. I could see them, hear them, but they all raced by.”

                Sans watched as the kid drew his legs out of the river and tucked them tightly against his chest.

                “Time passed. So much time. Eons. I was like a ghost, worse than a ghost. I couldn’t think or feel. There were just the pounding waves of centuries, wearing me down.

But I found a way out: a doorway, shaped like a little, red heart. And I was suddenly a passenger in a new body. Frisk’s.”

Sans cocked his head to an angle. “so, you got a new body, a new lease on life, and decided it was about time to start hacking away?”

“It wasn’t like that!” The kid gnashed his teeth and Sans could see moisture collecting in the corner of his eyes. “At first it just felt good to exist, to be an observer on this kid’s journey. Frisk wandered the ruins, and Mom guided him.

But then a monster startled him. He lashed out at it in fear, and it evaporated under the blow. Its magic flowed into me. I absorbed it like a sponge. It was good, Sans. Better than anything you’ll ever experience. It was as if I’d been dying of thirst all along, and only just realized it as I had my first drink.”

“can’t say that i regret missing out.”

“It was intoxicating. I urged Frisk to give me more. Every monster’s-worth of magic I soaked, the more I grew.” The kid took a series of rapid, shallow breaths and buried his fingers in his hair. “It just got out of control. By the time Frisk understood what was happening, the body was already mine. As I gorged on the magic, he sunk lower and lower. I could feel his resentment, his loathing towards me, but I just smothered him to sleep.

Then I killed her. I killed them all, even you. For the pleasure; for the chance to feel things bend and break.” The kid bowed his shoulders and covered his eyes with his hands.

“in case you’ve forgotten, kid, you can rewind the clock when things don’t work out for you. do you regret this? really?”

The child’s body shuddered with a silent sob.

“then go back and try again.”

“I don’t want to disappear, Sans. You don’t understand. If I go back, then I’ll just be a passenger again, a fragment. Frisk will destroy me the second he wakes up. He’ll rip me out of his soul like a tapeworm.”

“did the surface never occur to you?”

The child wiped his face and dried his hands on his pants. “You once told me about Gaster’s theories on magic. About how he believed that if too much was condensed into a single place it would rip through the fabric of reality like a bowling ball through toilet paper.” The kid let out a sobbing chuckle. “Well, it’s not a theory. If I kill—if I absorb Asgore, then I hit critical mass and end all life as we know it. I've done it before, many times, actually. It seemed so much fun back then, but I always ended up alone, drifting through a different kind of void."

Sans massaged his eye sockets. “so you’ve been looping for hundreds of years? what have you been doing all this time?”

The child looked in the direction of the barrier. “Hiding, mostly.”

“from me?”

“…No.”

A distant roar crushed the still air of the underground and sent shockwaves across the water’s surface. Sans could feel it vibrating in his soul. It spoke of agony and rage.

The kid reeled in the fishing pole and rested it on his lap. “Dad found out about Mom.”


	6. Chapter 6

               

If Sans had a heart, it would have been hammering through his ribcage. He tore his legs out of the river, drenching the child’s sweater, and leapt up. “what do you mean, kid? you need to start making sense right now!”

                The roar just kept going. He could feel the emotion of it resonating in his bones: a pain more intense than he thought could possibly exist.

                The child rose and began wringing the water out of his sweater. “On the first loop that I destroyed this place, he just stood there and suggested we talk it out over a cup of tea. He was like a big bottle of magic, practically asking to be cracked open and absorbed.”

                Sans darted his eyes about. The sound seemed to be growing more intense.

              “It went like that for a long time, on mechanical repeat. But the pleasure soured after a while. I got tired. So tired.”

                Sans wore a nervous smile. “and here i was telling myself i had you beat for three hundred years.”

                “It didn’t feel right anymore. I realized I didn’t like the way your bones splintered, or how the ketchup you always drink spills out. So I stopped killing.”

                The kid knelt down and slid a pair of knives out of his sweater sleeves. He placed them on the ground and began sifting through his pockets.

                ”I just hid from you, or talked you down. Sometimes, when I said the wrong thing or the watch put you in a bad mood, I’d just let you kill me. It was easier that way. It felt better.”

                Tremors flowed through the rock beneath Sans’ feet. He looked up and saw dust falling from the ceiling.

                “If Asgore lives long enough, then he finds out. He learns about how I killed Mo—killed Toriel... Sometimes I think he knew from the start, and it just snaps inside of him at some point.”

                The child dropped two fistfuls of metal knitting needles onto the stone. They clattered like broken bells. Sans could see they had been filed down to a wicked point. The child tested their tips with his finger and began weaving them through his sweater, like throwing knives in a sheath.

                “He consumes the souls, all six. Then he comes for me. No matter where I go, he always finds me.”

                The kid picked up the knives and rose with a slow breath.

                “wait, wait. are you going to fight him? how long have you been at this?”

                The child shook his head. “A long time. But it helps, believe it or not. Having a goal is important when there’s nothing else to measure.”

                “have you beaten him like this?”

                “You should go, Sans. I can tell you from personal experience, that much power makes it hard to think. He won’t recognize you.”

                 Sans shook his head so hard his neck popped. “no, i’m staying ri—”

                The cave entrance exploded. Stalactites and chunks of granite hailed down on the room.

The kid sidestepped and rolled, while Sans teleported back and forth.

Light spilled out of the jagged hole in the wall. It silhouetted a hulking form.

Sans’ jaw went slack.

The form was easily twelve feet tall. It stomped forward and shook the ground, leaving cracks in the stone behind each step.

“asgore?”

The king roared with such force that it nearly knocked Sans off his feet. He tried to lean into it like a hurricane wind.

Asgore stood before the pair in the tattered fragments of his armor and regalia. It had sheared apart and torn from the inside out. The six human souls formed a ring on his chest, and were embedded into it like brands.

Sans shuddered when he looked at Asgore’s face. His horns had grown and branched apart. They formed a twisted, thorny mess atop his head. His eyes were pupil-less and black as ink. He bared his teeth; they were the size of shovel blades, and razor sharp.

Asgore pointed his trident at the kid. It was six feet long, but it looked like a children’s toy in his hand. “YOU KILLED HER!”

He hefted the trident and threw it. It ripped through the air like an artillery round and pierced the river behind, sending a geyser of water fifteen feet into the air.

Sans could barely track it. For a second he thought the kid was gone, skewered at the bottom of the river. He did a double take, and saw the kid crouching low to the ground like a cornered animal.

Asgore slammed his fist against the cave wall and sent a few more stalactites crashing down. “YOU KILLED HER!” He lunged forward and readied his claws. They were like sharpened railroad spikes.

The kid tensed and dove as the colossal limbs converged on him. They cleaved fissures into the earth. Again, Sans thought it was over, but the kid darted under Asgore’s legs and began slashing at his heel.

Asgore bellowed and attempted to stomp him to death, but the kid was already rolling out before the attack began. He drew a few needles out of his sweater and tossed them, peppering Asgore’s face with puncture wounds.

This evoked yet another roar from Asgore. He barreled forward and struck at the kid with huge, sweeping blows. The kid dodged for several seconds, but was clipped by a glancing hit. It sent him cartwheeling through the air to land hard on his side. Sans could hear the crunch of bone from halfway across the room.

The kid propped himself up with his one good arm. The other hung uselessly at his side. He fished a smashed piece of butterscotch pie out of his pocket and wolfed it down in two bites.

Big, black tears collected in the corners of Asgore’s eyes and he began to froth at the mouth. “SHE TRUSTED YOU!”

Asgore opened his jaws and vomited a pillar of fire. The kid scrambled to his feet and sprinted for the river. He leapt just as the flames touched him. The stream of fire seemed to go on endlessly. It clashed with the water and sent up billowing clouds of steam. By the time Asgore was finished, the river had shrunk by nearly a third and thick mist filled the room.

Sans spotted the kid emerging from the water. One arm was still mangled, and there were scorch marks all over him. He gripped his remaining knife in his good hand and gave Asgore a hard stare.

“YOU’LL PAY!” Asgore thundered over and tried to flatten the kid with his fist, like crushing a bug. But the kid was gone. He had just vanished into the mist.

Asgore began to grunt in pain as phantom slashes struck his lower back and legs. He thrashed about, hoping to land a counter-blow, but the cuts just kept coming. It went on for nearly a minute, despite the great gouges Asgore tore out of the earth with every swing.

“ENOUGH!” Asgore breathed a ring of fire around himself and began taking a deep breath. His chest swelled to almost grotesque proportions and he let out another shockwave roar. The force of it banished the mist in seconds.

Sans scanned for the kid and found him on Asgore’s back. He held the dust-stained knife in his teeth and climbed with his one good arm. He balanced himself atop Asgore’s shoulders and prepared to plunge the knife into the base of Asgore’s neck.

The long roar had broken down into a series of heaving sobs. “Tori. Why did they take you too?”

The kid hesitated.

Asgore lurched back, and the kid lost his balance. He tumbled to the stone and Asgore whirled to face him. “WHY!”

The claws descended and the kid made no effort to dodge. They struck him, sinking down to the quick. He coughed, bringing some cherry-red to his lips.

Asgore drew closer to the child. “Why?”

The kid made a few attempts to lift his arm, and finally managed to reach up to touch Asgore’s tear-streaked face. He tried to speak through the blood pooling in his mouth. “I’m—s—sorry, Dad.”


	7. Chapter 7

             

“So that’s it.” The child threw his hands up. “My story, all twenty-eight hundred iterations of it.”

                Sans looked down at his watch beneath the counter. 2804. “you’re four short, kid.”

                The child laughed. “How could I forget?” He pantomimed tallying four marks on a chalkboard.

                Sans drummed his fingers on the underside of his barstool and scanned the empty booths of Grillby’s. The two lit candles beside the kid were the only sources of light. They sent the shadows of the tables and chairs scattering in panic every time a breeze struck. The child finally quieted down and drew a knitting needle out of his pocket. He held it like a pencil and began carving numbers and symbols into the wooden counter.

                Sans took a breath and tried to piece everything together. Two hours ago he had walked into the place fully intent on murdering the kid. It had been justified, and even now it probably still was. From what the kid had told him, he wouldn’t even object if it came down to it.

Pap wouldn’t have approved, though.

The stray idea t-boned Sans’ train of thought. A few pangs lashed at his soul, but he pushed them back.

What now?

The kid was different; there was no denying that. He wasn’t the same person he had been just eighteen hours ago. Even if the four secret passwords the kid had given were a trick, the watch still gave credence to his words. A lot could have happened in this pocket of time.

Sans checked the child’s progress with a sidelong glance. “you know, grillby usually likes to have some input when his bar gets redecorated. you mind stopping that, kid?”

The child flinched and returned the needle to his pocket. “Sorry.” He closed his eyes and began writing in the air with his finger. “It doesn’t really matter though, Sans. Asgore will be here in a few hours to smash this place to splinters. Then we’re back to the hallway.”

“yeah, you mentioned that.” Sans tried to suppress the resentment in his voice.

The two grew quiet.

The kid finished his calculations and leaned back on his stool. “Want to hear something funny?”

Sans did a quarter-twist to face the kid. “i’m always looking for new material. shoot.”

“I turned three hundred years old fifteen minutes ago.”

“that _is_ funny. you don’t look a day over two hundred and twenty-five.”

The kid tried to smile, but ended up hunching over on the counter and burying his head in his arms.

Sans started to apologize, but the first word stuck in his throat. He actually felt bad. He felt bad for hurting the feelings of a mass murderer. When in the last one hundred and twenty minutes had they shifted from mortal enemies to pals?

“who are you?”

The child offered a few muffled syllables.

“that’ll be tough to pronounce.”

The kid sat up and stared at the counter. He spoke in a reciting monotone. “I’m a parasite, or some kind of demon.”

“no, _who_. do you have a name?”

The child turned to Sans with blank amazement plastered on his face. He swallowed. “Who?”

Sans nodded. “this isn’t our first introduction, is it? we’ve bound to have had a few chats over the years.”

The kid wet his lips. “Yeah, we have… I always get a lot of _what_ ’s from you, but I’ve never gotten a _who_.” He straightened himself on the stool. “I’m—I’m Chara, nice to meet you.”

Sans spent a bit of his power and floated down a bottle from the bar’s top shelf. It was a red-label monster rum, Grillby’s specialty. The front depicted a shot glass engulfed by a fireball, and beneath it was written “the right kind of burn” in elegant font.

“well chara, down here monsters tend to celebrate their birthdays. would you care to?” He popped the bottle, poured two glasses, and deftly slid one over to the kid.

The child chuckled. “Are you sure I should be drinking this?”

“i’m not an expert on humans, but i’m pretty sure the drinking age is somewhere below three hundred.”

The kid tipped his head back and downed the drink is three sharp gulps. He flipped the glass over and planted it on the counter. “The gin Grillby keeps in the back is better.”

“you really have been here for a long time, haven’t you?”

“…Yeah…”

Sans winked and mimicked the kid, emptying his glass in three drafts and flipping it onto the counter. “happy birthday, chara.”

The child cupped his chin in his palms and leaned on the counter. “Thanks, Sans. Really.”

               Sans floated a new cup over and filled it. He took delicate sips and stared into the candles, trying hard not to think.

                The kid seemed to be dozing off, as his shoulders dipped perceptibly every few moments. Sans let it happen. They had all the time in the world, after all.

Something eventually disrupted the child’s stupor, and he bolted upright. He cast a fearful eye on Sans and reached out to grab his shoulder. The kid’s fingers settled on the coat and gently squeezed, searching for the bone beneath.

Sans tensed and fought the urge to fill the room with Gaster blasters.

The child let go and made an embarrassed little retreat. “Sorry. When you imagine something enough times the mind can trick you into thinking—I’m glad you’re here, Sans. I’m just really glad you’re here.”

Sans took another sip of his drink and didn’t watch the kid cry.


	8. Chapter 8

             

Sans planted his feet firmly on the welcome mat and rummaged through his pockets for his house key. The kid was draped over him in an unconscious piggyback ride, and rested his head on Sans’ shoulder. He murmured little half-words in his sleep and flexed his fingers.

                Sans felt something hard bang against his ribs and looked down to the quarter-empty bottle of gin the kid still clutched. He shifted the kid’s weight and tried to pry the bottle out of his hand, but it was impossible. The kid’s grip was like a bear trap.

                Sans managed to unlock the door and open it with a push of his snow-caked slipper. He kicked the doorframe to dislodge some powder and stepped inside. The wind immediately caught the door and closed it with a thump. The kid made a disquieted noise, but didn’t wake.

                For the fiftieth time, Sans questioned his own sanity at bringing the kid home. It just hadn’t seemed right to leave him at the bar, though. Nothing more complex than that ran through his head, and that worried him. He believed himself to be a rational guy, but the last few hours he’d spent with the kid made it difficult.

                It felt like the kind of bad sitcom Mettaton would have cooked up.

                _‘my best friend, the serial killer.’_

Sans fumbled for the light and accidentally banged the kid’s foot against the wall.

                He found the switch and flipped it. For a microsecond, he entertained the possibility that it was all an elaborate joke, that he was being punked and all his dead friends would leap out from behind the couch to share a laugh at his expense.

                The room brightened and Sans waited for his inane fantasy to come true.

                It didn’t.

                Sans staggered through the living room and thought about where to deposit the kid. His own bed was a tangled mess; He hadn’t even slept in it in days. He looked up the stairs towards Pap’s bedroom door. An image of the kid sleeping in Pap’s bed flashed through his mind.

                He dropped the kid on the couch.

                The absurdity of it all was wearing on Sans. He collapsed into an armchair and tried to rub the ache out of his shoulder blades. The child rested on the couch in a half-fetal position and continued to mumble. Sans tried to assemble the words into something coherent, but gave up after a minute.

                _does everyone look so innocent in their sleep?_

                Sans swiped a joke book off the coffee table and leafed through it to give his hands something to do. It was a science joke book, filled with obscure quantum physics puns and taxonomy wordplay. He had been through it a dozen times already, and scanned the tired jokes just to eat the passing minutes.

                He reached the back page and felt a barb through his soul. Pap’s chicken scratch handwriting covered the whole thing. A note at the top read: “Sans, I’ve decided to improve this book with my amazing comedic knowledge! You can use any of my jokes, but just make sure to say that the great Papyrus came up with it first!”

                A numbered list of science jokes and puns cramped the page. Sans rested his finger on one. “A neutron gets onto a bus and asks the driver how much the fare costs. The driver replies, ‘For you, no charge.’”

                Sans chuckled and the joke gained momentum. He began to laugh, louder and longer than he had in years. In that moment, it was the funniest joke he had ever read. He saw a tear on his cheekbone and the whole thing inverted.

                He wept.

                Crystal tears tumbled from his eye sockets and speckled the carpet like dew on morning grass. He held the book tightly to his chest as his whole body trembled.

                “Sans?”

                A thick sob choked him, and he struggled to swallow it. The kid was propped up on his elbows and had Sans pinned with a red-eyed look of worry.

                “Are you ok?”

                 “yeah, kid. i’m fine. i was just thinking about something.” He dug a few tears out of his sockets with his fingers. “you hungry? i think i need something to eat.”

                The kid looked at the carpet. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

                Sans hid himself in the kitchen and took small, controlled breaths. He thought back to the last time he had seen his own tears. It had been when Gaster died, a lifetime ago.

He grabbed a couple plastic containers of spaghetti and nuked them in the microwave. He tried harder than he had in his entire life to not think about where they came from. He grabbed two forks from the silverware drawer and waited in silence for ninety seconds.

                Sans rounded the corner with the food. The kid held the joke book and was staring at the back cover. He slammed it shut and returned it to the table once he heard Sans’ feet on the carpet. Sans tried to get a look at the kid’s expression, but his face was averted.

                “here.” Sans handed the kid one of the containers. As soon as it entered his hand, the kid gasped through his teeth and dropped it onto the coffee table. He stuffed his burned fingers into his mouth.

                “sorry. i can’t feel how hot it is.”

                The kid sucked on his fingers and shook his head.

                The meal was a quiet one. The kid used his off-hand to twirl the spaghetti.

               As always, eating it was a task. The noodles were rubbery and undercooked, while the sauce was watery and sour. Sans kept an eye on the kid’s face, and felt an empathetic twinge when the kid took his first bite.

                The child swallowed hard. “Did he make this? I remember he had an affection for spaghetti.”

                Sans tried to keep a neutral tone. “you’ve got good memory. you hung onto that for three hundred years?”

                “Something about the loops makes everything seem like it happened yesterday; hundreds of years’ worth of yesterdays. I could draw out every line of your time machine schematics if you gave me a pen and paper.”

                Sans jolted in his chair and searched his pocket for his lab key. It was still there.

                “how do you—”

                “Don’t worry. I gave up on fixing it a long time ago.”

                The kid looked away and continued eating.

                Sans glared at the kid for a whole minute before realizing his magic eye was blazing. He tried to relax and returned to his food.

                _should have expected that._

                The room felt heavy. The bright lights and warm color scheme of the house did little to disperse the pressure. Sans bounced his leg on the ball of his foot and listened. The underground’s inexplicable wind howled and beat at the windowpanes like an intruder.

                The child sent a timid glance towards Sans.

                “you got something to say, kid?”

                “I want t—” The child relaxed his body. “I want to know about him. What kind of person was he, was Papyrus.” He closed his eyes and seemed to wait.

                A little flame of violence kindled in Sans. It had been dormant up to this point, but the kid’s words sparked it.

                “you want to know… what kind of person he was?”

                The kid squeezed his eyelids tighter. “Yes.”  
                “well, i don’t know if i could do him justice, you know?” Sans could feel the heat rising, and his voice rose with it. “he was a pretty great guy, one of the best. if he was around, then i’m sure he’d love to tell you all about himself.”

                The kid gripped his knees and bowed his head.

                “but he’s not here anymore, for some reason. i remember just a couple days ago he was making the very food you’re eating.” Sans rose and let out a mirthless chuckle. “oh yeah, you killed him.”

                Sans’ magic surged out and flipped the coffee table through the air. It spun like a pinwheel and crashed into the banister. He strode forward and manifested a few Gaster blasters.

                “seems like you’re a little late to be asking questions about your victims.”

                The kid’s body went slack, like a rabbit in a wolf’s jaws.

                Sans froze, finally realizing.

He took a step back and banished his blasters. They unraveled into threads of magic and faded out of existence.

“you’re waiting for me to kill you. aren’t you, kid?”

The child looked up and offered a half-hearted grin. He was just short of hyperventilation, and sweat dotted his face. “Is it that obvious?”

“why?”

“I usually end our chats with that question. You kill me every time I ask it.”

“then why ask?”

The kid took a minute to normalize his breathing. Sans crossed the room and mulled over the damage he had caused.

“Pap told me a long time ago that I could do better, that I could be better, even if I didn’t think so.” The child wiped his forehead. “He believed in me, even as I cut him down.”

Sans pulled the joke book out from under the broken glass and wood fragments. Cuts and dents marred the cover.

“It didn’t mean anything to me at the time. But every reset brought it back, like all the other memories. I guess it just got under my skin after a few thousands loops. That’s why I need to know about him. Why did he think I could change? Why did he let me just…”

Sans returned to his chair and tried to dust off the book. “that’s the thing about pap. he was just like that, from day one: the bright-eyed idealist.”

A memory peeked out before Sans. “when we were baby bones, one of our playmates lost her favorite doll. she cried about it for hours. eventually, pap decided to go hunting for it. he went all out, like he always does. he made flyers, went door-to-door, searched for days. he never found it. so, he sold half his action figure collection to buy her a new doll.” Sans smirked. “she found her old one under her bed a week later.”

He opened the book and reread Pap’s note.

“the world’s a lesser place now.”

Crystal tears started bouncing off the paper. Sans cursed and tried to hold them in, but they just kept falling.

A roar echoed in the distance. It vibrated with anguish and played a sad duet with Sans’ soul.

The kid stood. “It’s time.” He slipped a pair of knives out of his sleeves.

Sans wiped his cheekbones. “it’s asgore, right? you going for another loop?”

The kid drew close to the door. “Do you think Pap was right? About me?”

Sans rose out of his chair and approached the kid. He tried to conjure something sentimental, but it died in his thoughts. “honestly? it doesn’t matter what i think… pap believed in you, but it’s up to you if he was right or not. so _you_ tell _me_ … was he?”

The kid dropped his knives. “I’m scared, Sans. I don’t want to become nothing. Nobody will even remember me if I go back, I’ll just be snuffed out.”

“what are you saying?”

The child threw himself at Sans’ chest, burying his face into Sans’ jacket. It grew wet as the kid began to sob. “You were the only one I could ever talk to; my only friend. I’ll miss you more than you’ll ever know, Sans.”

Sans said nothing. Despite himself, he reached up and returned the hug.  

The roar grew closer and Sans could feel the kid quivering.

The child’s words became hurried and desperate. “I’m sorry, Sans. I’m so sorry. Everything. The time I’ve stolen, the lives I’ve ended. I’ll never make it up. All the suffering I’ve caused you. I want you to know I’m sorry.”

Sans grasped for words. “i—i’ll miss you too, chara.”

The kid shook his head and wiped his eyes on his sweater sleeve. After a few slow breaths, he looked up and smiled. “No you won’t. It’s better that way.”

The child crushed Sans in a final, trebling embrace, then dashed out the door.

He skidded to a halt on the snow and looked back. “Be happy, Sans. For both of us.”

Sans fished his pocket watch out of his coat and looked it over. It was an ugly, gunmetal thing, with screws and rivets protruding from it at odd angles. It wasn’t digital, and had no hands or face numbers. A numerical value, like a car’s odometer, was displayed on the front. 2804.

 _see you soon, pap,_ he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you so choose, this point can be taken as an "end" of sorts. Turn a blind eye to the probabilities and you can close the book content. However...


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...there are always loose ends to tie up.

             

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He had read about it in books, looked at illustrations in magazines, but the reality of it threw him off balance. It was the way it just seemed to hang in empty space and ignite the horizon with crimson. He wanted to reach out and hold it, to see if he could feel the warmth in his bones.

                The others stood on the clifftop beside Sans and exclaimed loudly into the wind. Sans didn’t take part, and pinned his emotions close to his chest.

                He smirked at Pap’s question. “we call that ‘the sun,’ my friend.”

Sans glanced over at the kid. He was standing beside Toriel, tightly clasping her paw. He squinted into the sun and his chin trembled. Sans noticed something streak down the kid’s cheek and catch the light.

It made no sense.

Sans had been studying the kid for days, but he still couldn’t piece him together. A blender of joy and sorrow seemed to fill the kid. One minute he was brave smiles, and the next hugs and lamentations.

Part of Sans wanted to walk over and comfort the kid, but a little warning bell told him otherwise.

The group’s conversation faded back into Sans’ awareness. They were talking about ambassadors or something. Pap made some silly declaration and charged off down the mountain trail. It felt good to see so much energy from Pap. The urge to chase after him spread through Sans, but instead, he excused himself from the group and headed back into the underground.

He needed to check something.

*****

                Sans clomped through Hotland and debated with himself whether to just portal home or not. It was faster, but witnessing the wave of information sweep through the underground was a unique treat.

                A flame elemental bobbed back and forth before a trio of its peers as Sans passed. “Guys, guys, guys, guys! Did you hear? The barrier broke! We can finally visit a volcano!”

                The trio oohed and aahed, while a nearby vulkin screwed its face up in confusion.

                Sans chuckled. “there’s a forest up there, just be sure to keep your cool. we don’t have a fire department.”

                The elementals blazed in unison. “But, we’re the fire department!”

                “uh huh, well then we don’t have a water department.”

                Sans kept walking and smiled. Things were turning out well.

                A thought tickled the back of his skull and he pulled out his pocket watch. 2805. He shrugged. It was still broken. He couldn’t gauge how long it had been like this, but there was _no_ way the value was accurate. He’d settle the matter soon enough. For the moment, however, he was enjoying his walk.

                A cheery voice behind Sans drew his attention. “Where ya headin’?”

                Sans looked over his shoulder to see the child shadowing his footsteps. “hey, frisk. i gotta check something at home.”

                The kid’s blue-eyed gaze darted across Sans’ face, and he donned a shy grin. “Can I walk with you?”

                “i don’t see why not, but what about the others up top?”

                “They won’t go too far. We have time.”

                “alright then, shall we?”

*****

                The child leapt from puddle to puddle and sent sheets of water crashing through the air. Sans stayed out of range and let the kid have his fun. He had earned it, after all.

                Waterfall was a practical panic of activity. The good news had begun to spread, and every recipient was scurrying about in search of someone new to tell.

                Sans and the kid made their way through a series of low-ceilinged tunnels thick with echo flowers. Little gleeful whispers bounced off the walls.

                “…It finally happened…”

                “…We’ll really get to see it!...”

                “…Did Asgore break the barrier?...”

                “…See? I told you all it was just a matter of patience…”

                The kid settled down and drew close to Sans. He squeezed water out of his sweatpants as he walked. “Everybody seems really happy.”

                Sans placed a hand on the kid’s head. “that’s because they _are_ really happy, kiddo. you made a lot of dreams come true.”

                The kid nodded and wiped his damp hands on his sweater.

                They walked down a rarely-traveled side path and it grew silent. The echo flowers still lined the walls, but had nothing to say.

                After a while, the kid twitched, as if prodded by something, and asked a question. “Are we friends, Sans?”

                The echo flowers snapped up the words eagerly.

                “…friends…”

                “…are we…”

                “…Sans?...”

                Sans laughed. “that’s an odd question. of course we are, why?”

                “…why?...”

                “…odd question…”

                “…of course…”

                The kid reached out and held Sans’ coat sleeve. “No reason, I just needed to know.”

                “…know…”

                “…no reason…”

                “…I just…”

                They emerged at the riverside on the slushy border between Waterfall and Snowdin. Sans spotted the snow-capped roof of Grillby’s in the distance and smirked.

_why not._

                “hey, kid. you hungry?”

*****

                Grillby raised a burning eyebrow at Sans and adjusted his spectacles.

                Sans shrugged in response. “c’mon, i don’t see you charging off towards the surface either. it’ll still be there tomorrow. we’ve got time for a burger and fries, don’t we?”

                As usual, Grillby said nothing and disappeared into the back room.

                Sans and the kid sat at the bar. The place was completely empty, except for them. Everybody else was outside cheering in the streets, or already making their way towards Waterfall.

                The kid spun on his stool and giggled. “It feels like it’s been a long time since we ate at Grillby’s together.”

                “it’s been less than two days, champ.”

                “Really? Huh.”

                Grillby emerged, balancing two burgers and two baskets of fries on his arms. He slid them onto the counter with a little flourish.

                Sans fished a bottle of ketchup out of his coat and drowned his fries in a red river.

                The kid smiled and followed suit.

                “so you’ve been learning from my shining example?”

                “Something like that.”

                Grillby vanished again, and the two devoured their food. By the end, the kid’s fingers were slimy and his face was spattered with ketchup.

                He grabbed a napkin and tried to tidy up. “So, what will you do on the surface, Sans? Got any big plans?”

“i’m not sure if you know this, kid, but i’ve got a thing for jokes.”

The kid smirked. “Really? I had no idea.”

“stand-up comedy. i figure the world could always use a few more laughs. if everybody gets their happy ending, then that’s what i’ll do.”

“Didn’t we get it already?”

“uh, yeah, definitely. it just pays to be sure about this sort of thing.”

“What do you mean?”

The watch felt like a lead brick in Sans’ jacket pocket. “don’t worry about it.”

Grillby returned from the back armed with a bottle and three crystal wine glasses. He nodded at Sans and filled the glasses with three precise motions. He kept one for himself and slid the two others across the bar.

The kid reached out to accept his, but Sans snatched it by the neck mid-journey. “grillby, he’s a child. what are you doin’?”

The bartender slanted his shoulder and began cleaning his spectacles.

Sans laughed. “right, so me calling him ‘kid’ every ten seconds wasn’t enough of a hint?”

Grillby filled a shot glass with apple juice and presented it to the child. The three of them clinked glasses and toasted to the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still here? I'm pleased :)
> 
> Things are going to get complicated.


	10. Chapter 10

               

                “guess i’ll see you on the surface, kid.”

                The two stood outside of Sans’ house and exchanged awkward looks.

                The kid shifted from sneaker to sneaker and rubbed his arms violently. “Y—y—yeah.”

                Sans felt a stab of guilt for turning the kid away at his door, but he couldn’t let him know. “tell tori and pap i’ll be up in a bit.”

                “S—sure thing.”

                Sans unlocked his door and started to enter.

                The kid blurted a question into the cold air. “Are you happy, Sans?”

                Sans searched the kid’s expression for some hint, but found nothing. “you’re just full of weird questions today, aren’tcha?”

                “Are you, though?”

                “i saw the sun for the first time in my entire life, frisk. between you, me, and the doorknob, yeah. you bet i am.”

                A wan smile spread across the kid’s face. “Good… That’s good. I’m—” He looked away and tapped absently at his chest. “Hey, Sans, is this thing you have to check on really important? You can’t just bail on it a head up to the surface with me? It’s a lonely walk.”

                “well, uh, yeah kinda. don’t worry, it’ll only take a bit. i’ll see you topside in a couple hours.”

                The kid suppressed a tremble by hugging himself.

                “you alright, kid? you’re looking a little blue.”

                “I’m alright, it’s not that cold.”

                “That’s not what I meant, buddy.”

                The kid offered a few little nods and a quiet “Yeah, I’m fine.” before trotting off down the road.

                “see you soon!” Sans shouted.

                The kid waved a hand over his shoulder and didn’t look back. 

                Sans watched the kid go, up until the point that he faded into the caves and out of sight.

                Once he was sure, Sans locked the front door without entering and circled around behind the house. He shifted some metal panels and inspected the entrance to his lab. Everything seemed just the way he had left it. He entered and the fluorescent lights overhead blinked to life.

                An inch-deep blanket of dust covered every surface, and his slippers dug trenches with each shuffling stride. He approached the broken time machine and kicked its side out of spite. A hollow, metal ringing filled the room.

                _scrap heap._

The computer monitor on the far wall began to boot up, as if in response to the sound. Sans made his way towards it and tore the watch out of his pocket.

                He felt almost foolish for making such a big deal out of an obvious error. He’d fix it if he could, otherwise he’d just label it another ‘busted Gaster invention’ and toss it over beside the time machine.

                He fiddled with the watch and opened a covert panel on the side. A cord extended out of it, and he plugged it into a port on the monitor.

                His soul grew chill.

                A cascade of warning messages stacked onto the screen like playing cards. Sans’ fingers began to dance across the keyboard as he tried to make sense of them all.

                **Temporal anomaly identified**

**Timeline redundancies exceeding nominal thresholds**

**Spatial collapse detected**

**Chronological collapse detected**

                Sans’ breath grew sharp and fast. The timeline looked like it had gone through a wood chipper. He ground his teeth and started combing through the watch’s code. It was an error; it couldn’t possibly be anything else. He started a diagnostic and let it run. He waited, and paced rapid circles around the lab, etching messy Venn diagrams into the dust.

                The diagnostic came up green. The data was all real.

                Sans slammed his fists on the keyboard, but went straight back to typing.

                The data showed over twenty-eight hundred loops, just like the watch had said. Gaster’s words buzzed about Sans’ head, and he swatted them away with a growl.

                The loops lasted between minutes and weeks, and nearly a fifth of them ended in total destruction of time and space. The computer whirred and groaned as it tried to process the total time spent in the loops.

                “He says it was three hundred years, four hours, and twenty-two minutes… not counting this one.”

                Sans spun so fast his spine popped. The kid was standing on the far side of the room, just out of the light. He held his hands behind his back and scuffed at the dust with his shoe.

                “Hey, Sans.”

                The monitor beeped and the calculation appeared in bold blue letters.

**300yr 00dy 04hr 19min**

                “He says your computer needs recalibration.”

                Sans squared his shoulders and feigned a casual tone. “you’re pretty bright for a ten-year-old. they really gave you an a+ education on the surface.”

                The kid took a step forward and into the light. “Sans, I—”

                “you’re also quite the prankster. i thought i was good, but you had me fooled this whole loop. you even made me doubt that you had any determination in the first place.” he glanced over at the monitor. “looks like you’ve got that to spare, actually.”

                “I guess so; he was good at that… But it’s not a prank, Sans. Really.”

                “oh? i suppose not. most people probably wouldn’t find the obliteration of time and space to be very funny. how many times did it happen, by the way. just out of curiosity.”

                The kid looked away. “Five hundred and forty-three.”

                “huh, yeah that’s not funny.”

                “It’s different now. I—he—”

                “so, has the underground been your own twisted time-playground for the last three hundred years?”

                “He thought of it more as a prison.”

                “you’ve been toying with us like marionettes all this time? just because you can?”

                The kid didn’t have a response. He kept his hands behind his back and stared at the dust trenches.

                Sans felt his magic eye heating up. He tried to reel back and lower his voice. “look, pal, i can appreciate a practical joke as much as the next guy, but this…” He looked at the time display. “…this is just sick…”

                “It isn’t some kind of sick joke, ok? Well it—it stopped being one.”

                “hmm, really? answer me this—” Sans swiped his arm through the air, and wrenched the light fixtures out of the ceiling with his magic. They burst on the floor like spark-filled piñatas and electric current arced across them. It went pitch black. “how many times have i seen the sun?”


	11. Chapter 11

             

For a moment, the lab was dark as the void. The only illumination came from Sans' blue eye. Time stretched as every passing second felt like an age. Eventually, the computer rebooted and the cream glow of emergency lighting filled the room.

                _you always had a backup for everything, didn’t you, gaster?_

                The kid was still there, rigid as a statue. He took a step forward. “Once, Sans. You saw the sun once.”

                Sans scoffed. “sure, buddy.”

                “Please. He made mistakes, but—”

                “you know, this ‘he’ gag is getting really tired. who’s ‘he?’ are you pinning this whole thing on some imaginary friend you concocted?”

                “He isn’t imaginary.” The kid gripped the sweater over his chest. “Chara’s here, with me.”

                “chara, huh? so you’re white as snow, then? It was your hitchhiker chara that turned time into swiss cheese and ended all life five hundred times over? isn’t that convenient.”

                “Sans, please listen to me. Chara walked the wrong path, but he isn’t the same person anymore.” The kid looked to the monitor. “That’s all over. No more.”

                “as much as i want to believe that, the data trend says otherwise. this is all just act 1, scene 2806, of your cruel little play.”

“You’re wrong! The play is over, this is the happy end.” He drew his hand from behind his back and held it palm up. “We’re friends, Sans. You said so yourself. Please, put away the watch. Come back to the surface with me.”

                “friends, huh? i dunno, most friends don’t keep world-ending secrets from each other. we might need to rethink our relationship.”

                Emotion began to strangle the kid’s words. “Don’t say that, Sans. Please, trust me just one more time. Forget all this and come count the stars with me.”

                Sans felt a great precipice yawning before him. He teetered on the brink with the choice. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and smiled. “no deal, kiddo. you can’t just bury what you’ve done. even if you’re being honest, and you’re not just playing me… your sins will never stop crawling on your back.

people always learn the truth, no matter how long it takes.”

                The kid’s arm went limp and fell to his side. “He wasn’t lying when he called you stubborn. You’re worse than Asgore.” He gritted his teeth and stifled a sob. “I’m sorry, Sans. It can’t happen again. We’re too close.” He pulled a knife out from behind his back.

                Sans eyed the dull gleam of the blade. “yeah, we definitely need to rethink that ‘friend’ thing.”

                Tears began to collect in the kid’s eyelashes. He clamped the knife hilt in both hands. “I’m so sorry, Sans.”

                The kid’s blue eyes disappeared beneath his eyelids, and he exhaled for a long second. His shoulders drooped and an indescribable fatigue seemed to soak into his features. When he opened his eyes, they were ruby red, and seemed to almost glow in the low light.

                The kid looked around, half-dazed and finally settled on Sans. “I guess it was just wishful thinking, then.” He blinked the tears out of his eyes and glanced down at the knife. His teeth sank into his lip and drew a pinprick of blood. It inched down his chin as he spoke. “He thought he could convince you in one try. He seemed to forget it took me over two thousand to ask you a single question.”

                Sans stuffed his fists into his pockets and leaned on the wall. “i get the feeling we’ve switched ‘he’s.’ so you’re chara, then? i’d shake your hand, but well…” He nodded towards the knife. “i’d rather go on living.”

                “He was so sure, too. That you would just let it all go; that we’d walk out of here together.”

                “happy to disappoint.”

                The kid grimaced. “I can feel him crying.”

                “a killer’s tears aren’t worth a while lot, bud.”

                “Don’t call him that! He doesn’t deserve that from you.”

                Sans straightened. “oh? then who does?”

                “Me.”

                The child brandished the knife and lunged. He moved so fast his eyes left a red streak in Sans’ vision.

Sans teleported across the room, more on instinct than reaction. He looked down, and a huge rend seemed to appear in his jacket. He hadn’t even seen the kid swing. He prodded at the bone beneath and breathed hot relief.

                “you’re fast when you want to be.”

                The kid rolled his shoulders. “That always killed you in the hallway. I’m not what I used to be.”

                Sans let his eye burn, and launched a counter attack. A series of bone prisons materialized around the kid and stabbed inwards, to impale and crush.

                The kid shifted and dove through each one, making a slow advance towards Sans all the while. “I knew you’d do this. You couldn’t just be happy, like I begged.”

                “you’ve gotta see things from my side of the fence, bucko. for all i know, you were gonna kill me from the beginning.”

                “I didn’t want this!”

                The kid lunged a second time, but Sans was ready. He teleported back to the console and filled the room with blaster beams. As the kid dodged and rolled, Sans smashed out a command on the keyboard and a hidden doorway opened. He darted inside and punched the emergency lock. The door slammed shut just as the kid neared.

                Sans braced himself against the door as his whole body heaved. He checked himself again, and saw a fresh slash in his coat. It was insane. The kid was so fast. He ripped off his jacket and threw it on the ground.

_how many times has this all played out? how many times have i been fooled?_

                Sans stomped down the staircase and into the sub-lab. Maybe Gaster had left one last parting gift for him.

*****

                As expected, the kid hacked the override on the door lock in minutes. His footfalls echoed down the staircase like death bells.

Sans sifted through Gaster’s forgotten inventions, searching for a miracle. They lined the dozens of tables and shelves that were scattered about the massive, rectangular room. Most were broken, or literal junk, but Sans held out hope for a portable DT extractor.

                This had to end. They were all too close to the sun for the kid to ruin it again.

                “I spent a lot of time down here.” The kid emerged from the staircase and rested a hand on one of the tables. “Searching for spare parts to fix that scrap heap time machine upstairs.”

                The common ground brought a grim smirk to Sans’ face. “at least there’s one thing we can agree on.”

                The child began to weave through the maze-like tables. “Why didn’t you just trust Frisk and walk away? We were so close.”

                Sans kept his eye locked on the kid, and continued to search with a blind hand. “dunno. maybe it was his tone of voice or his posture. it could have also been the knife he was holding behind his back. hard to say.”

                “I can’t do this anymore, Sans. I haven’t killed anyone in almost two hundred years.”

                “sorry, but i don’t think there are any world records for ‘longest time spent without killing someone.’”

                The child drew closer and Sans retreated behind more tables.

                “I know what you’ll do. You’ll tell them all. They’ll come after me like you did, like Asgore did.” The kid overturned a table to get closer to Sans. “I won’t kill Mom or Pap again. I can’t.”

                “i’m flattered you’re willing to make an exception for me.”

                “If I MUST!”

                The child leapt over a table and rushed at Sans.

                Sans teleported back and used his magic to fill the air with scrap metal projectiles. The kid dodged, but took a blow to the head. He staggered back, and blood began to trickle from his brow.

                Sans watched him bleed. “so you are human, after all. i had my doubts.”

                The kid dabbed at his forehead with his sweater sleeve. “You can call me demon if it makes you feel better.”

                “it has a nice ring to it.”

                The child steadied himself on a table and took a few steps towards Sans. “You once asked me to reset to square one. And I did, thinking all the while that I’d vanish. But I went through with it, for you and everyone else. It seemed worth it: to finally smash the cage I had built for myself and set you all free.” The kid scowled. “But here we are. same cage, different shape. You’re the jailor, Sans. You and the watch.”

                “most people get locked up for a reason, champ. all things considered, i think you probably deserve to do some hard time.” He let his eyes fade out. “maybe even capital punishment.”

                “But what about Frisk!? Does he deserve punishment? He just wanted to share the world with you.”

                “maybe. the verdict’s still out on that one. there’s always some guilt by association when you’re roomies with a mass murderer.”

                The kid snarled and advanced. “No more.”

                Sans sent another volley of scrap through the air, but the kid dove under a table. Sans tried to track him, but the kid was just gone. Sans teleported to a corner of the room to put his back against a wall. He tossed tables with his magic to try to flush the kid out of hiding.

                The child’s voice reached out from somewhere. It rebounded off the walls, making it impossible to pinpoint. “He spared me, Sans. After the lifetimes I stole from him, after all the blood I spilled with his hands, he spared me.”

                “can’t say i’d do the same thing in his shoes…”

                Sans scanned a nearby table and spotted a DT extractor. It was a charcoal-black piece of metal that vaguely resembled a gun. Two prongs protruded from where the muzzle should have been. Their razor tips glinted invitingly.

He inched towards it.

                “I owe him. I owe him a life. He doesn’t deserve to rot down here in this sin-prison that I constructed. You don’t have the right to keep him here because of me.”

                “so, what then? just one more murder to hide all the others? after this it’s nothing but sunshine and rainbows? what happens when they come looking for me?”

                Sans took another step towards the extractor. A hand settled on his shoulder, and fear locked his joints. The kid was behind him, knife in hand. A sheath of tears covered his eyes and spilled out onto his cheeks. The glistening red matched the blood oozing from his forehead.

                “Please… don’t make me kill you.”

                Sans whispered through a half-breath. “that’s entirely up to you, kid.”

                He tensed and gathered his magic to teleport.

                The knife blow fell like a thunderbolt.


	12. Chapter 12

Sans lurched back and slammed into a table. It slid out from under him and toppled, taking him down with it. Gadgets and scrap fell around him, bouncing off his shoulders and head. The DT extractor landed a single foot from his limp hand.

                The kid stood over him and tried to speak through his sobs. “I don’t k—know where you came from, but you had a life before this, didn’t you? You liv—lived, at least for a while.” He swallowed. “This child never had anything like that. No life, no happiness. He came to the mountain to die, S—sans.” His breath grew faster. “If I stand aside and let you trap him here, he’ll end up just like I did. And you’ll have created another demon.”

                Sans checked to see if his arms still worked. He kept an accusing glare leveled at the kid, not wanting to look down at himself and find a ruin of bone fragments where his ribcage used to be.

                “ _i’ll_ have? you’re the grand architect of this murder-go-round, remember? who’s making the demon, again?”

                The kid straddled Sans’ body and held up the knife. His arm shook so badly he looked like he was freezing to death. He braced one arm with the other arm and bowed his head. He began to whisper something under his breath; his clenched throat garbled the words.

                Sans moved his hand towards the DT extractor, micrometer by micrometer.

                The words finally clicked in Sans’ mind and a he began to laugh low in his chest.

                “P—pepper spray… Buttercup… Galaga… Wi—Wing Dings.”

                The kid kept repeating, and Sans kept laughing.

                Sans settled his fingers around the grip of the DT extractor.

                “you can drop the act. no amount of secret passwords is gonna convince me we’re friends.”

                The kid fell to his knees with a cry and began to slash wildly.

                White scraps of Sans’ undershirt flew through the air like snow flurries. He could feel the impacts, hear the crack of metal on bone, but there was no pain. Maybe he was too far gone. He looked up into the kid’s face. The red eyes and bared teeth set a weird contrast to the tears.

                _hope you don’t mind me bringing a guest, gaster._

                Sans pooled his strength into his arm and surged to a sitting position. He plunged the prongs of the DT extractor into the kid’s chest.

                And pulled the trigger.

                The child stopped mid-strike and his body went stiff, as if he were being electrocuted. His eyes locked with Sans’, and a fathomless horror bloomed within them.

                 The extractor began with a low hum, but quickly climbed to a piercing shrill at the upper limits of hearing. It drew upon Sans’ magic for fuel, and formed a dense whirlpool of energy around the prongs.

                The kid’s face was locked in a silent, pain-wracked scream. He spasmed every few seconds, as the machine tugged at his essence.

                Sans planted a hand on the kid’s shoulder for leverage and ripped the extractor out of his chest with one brutal motion.

                The kid’s body went slack and crumpled onto the floor like a broken department store mannequin.

                Something was skewered on the tip of the prongs. It took Sans several seconds of staring at it to recognize what it was: a soul. It was a sickly, mahogany-red color, and was so thin that it looked two-dimensional, like a shadow. It projected a faint glow that swelled and receded rhythmically, giving Sans the impression that it was breathing.

                “guess you’re more determination than soul. i’m glad we finally got to meet face to face, since we’ll be sharing the same ferry to hell.”

                Sans collected his magic and prepared to reduce the soul to dust before he did the same.

He paused.

                Something in the peripheries of Sans’ mind commanded his attention. He looked down at the lacerated rags that used to be his shirt. His bones were completely unscathed. The hailstorm of knife blows hadn’t even left a scratch.

                Sans rose cautiously to his feet and ran a hand over his ribs. He looked to the sharpened knife the kid still gripped and shook his head, trying to understand.

               The child stirred like waking out of a powerful dream. His eyelids fluttered and his blue gaze took a while to focus. He finally settled on the DT extractor in Sans’ hand, and his eyes went wide.

                He shrieked. “CHARA!”

                The sound clawed at the air and sent a shiver up Sans’ vertebrae.

                “there really are two of you.”

                The kid let the knife clatter to the ground and struggled to his feet. He reached out to snatch the extractor from Sans’ hand. “Give him back!”

                Sans lifted the extractor above his head and pushed the kid back with his magic.

                The kid flew through the air like a ragdoll. He crashed into a table and it buckled under the impact.

                Sans was puzzled. It had been so easy to toss the kid. He hadn’t even landed on his feet.

                The child crawled out of the wreckage and clutched at his elbow. “I’ll fix this, Chara! Don’t worry.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then opened them. He made a fearful little noise when nothing happened, and tried again. The veins on his temples throbbed with the effort.

                “not feeling very determined?” Sans waggled the DT extractor. “you better get used to it, because it’s never coming back.”

                Terror began to creep across the kid’s face, but he smothered it and climbed to his feet. He cradled his arm protectively and charged forward to make another attempt at the extractor.

                Sans teleported a few feet out of range every time the kid reached for it.

                “Stop it!” the kid screamed.

                He made a series of clumsy grabs before Sans slammed him to the ground with another burst of magic.

                The child’s body quivered with exertion as he tried to pick himself back up. “Don’t hurt him.”

                “in case you weren’t keeping up with the play by play, kiddo, he was trying to kill me. hurting each other is a given in fights like this.”

                The kid’s voice grew petulant. “If he wanted you dead, you would be, you big—” He searched for the right word. “Stupid!” He hurled it with all the venom he could muster.

                The child rose again and reached for the extractor. Sans didn’t even bother to use his magic. He just held it out of reach and pushed the kid’s chest with an outstretched arm.

                “what are you doing?” Sans whispered.

                The kid eventually tripped over his own sneakers and went down hard. A few drops of blood from his head wound sprinkled onto the ground. He reached up to touch his forehead, and his hand came back crimson.

                He started to wail.

                Peals of anguish flowed out of the kid like a river, and showed no signs of stopping.

                For the first time in ages, Sans’ perpetual half-smile cracked and fell.

                “you’ve never fought anyone before, have you kid?”

                The child wiped at his eyes, but only succeeded in smearing blood like face-paint. “He always did that… To protect me.”

                “you really are white as snow.” Sans looked to the soul fragment impaled on the extractor. “so he was the one dancing around pap and undyne yesterday, begging them to stop? why didn’t he just kill them?”

                The kid held out his hand “Give him back.” It was no longer a command.

                The great machine of Sans’ mind ground to a halt. The puzzle before him was too elaborate, the pieces didn’t fit together. He looked into the kid’s bruised and bleeding face, and almost just handed the extractor over.

                “but—but he—” His thoughts rebooted. “he killed so many people! and used your own hands to do it! he—”

                “Please.” The kid’s words were almost inaudible. “Give him back.”


	13. Chapter 13

“here.” Sans tossed the first aid kit onto his living room couch and leaned against the banister. He aimed the DT extractor up at the ceiling and tried to ignore the glow that the soul fragment gave off.

                The kid sat gingerly on the couch and started sifting through the box. It contained a variety of monster remedies and was completely useless to him, aside from the bandages. The kid began to wrap a white strip around his head to cover up the wound. The cloth darkened to scarlet almost immediately. The kid made a pained noise, but said nothing.

                “why?” Sans asked the same question for the fifth time in ten minutes.

The kid didn’t bother to ask for a clarification.

                “Because he said he was sorry.”

                Sans gouged at the inside of his slippers with his toes. “what are you, a chil—” He sighed. “for the last time, that isn’t an answer. i’m looking for something like: ‘i was afraid to be alone’, ‘i wasn’t sure how to destroy him’, or ‘you know what, being friends with a murderer really isn’t that bad’!”

                The kid struggled to wrap a bandage square around his elbow with medical tape. “I’m friends with you, aren’t I?”

                 Sans’ voice chilled. “what do you mean by that, kid?”

                “You’ve killed Chara thousands of times over the years. Doesn’t that make you a murderer?”

                “that’s different, and you know it! this _thing_ —” he shook the prongs of the extractor for emphasis, “—doesn’t deserve mercy, and destroying it should hardly be called murder.”

                “You’ve been killing me, too,” the child muttered.

                Sans pretended he hadn’t heard, and spent the next few moments studying the wallpaper.

The kid shifted on the couch and bent his elbow too far in the process. He stifled a cry by gnawing on his lip.

                Sans squirmed, trapped between his impulse to apologize and his suspicion.

                “look, i’m sorry for hurting you. but believe me, if i find out your silly pity wasn’t the only reason for keeping this thing alive, then we’ll have to finish the chat we started in my sub-lab.”

                “You don’t know anything.” The kid drew his legs onto the couch and rested his chin on his knees. “If not for that stupid watch, we’d be on the surface right now, tracing constellations.”

“and you’d still have a demon buried in your chest!”

                The kid threw out the first hateful look Sans had ever seen from him. “He’s not a _thing_ , Sans. He’s not a _demon_. He’s…” The kid trailed off and turned his head to face the opposite side of the room, pillowing his temple on his kneecaps.

                Silence began to settle like smog, but Sans barreled through it with a random thought.

                “if you knew i was going to do this, then why let it happen? why not just steal the watch and chuck it into a lake?”

                “You sound like him when you say that.”

                “i don’t appreciate the insult, pal.”

                The kid flipped his head to look at Sans. Tears oozed out of his eyes. They inched across his face and over the bridge of his nose. “ _He_ wanted to do that, but I didn’t listen. I thought I could just talk to you, make you understand.”

                “and if that failed, then just killing me was your plan b?”

                “There was a reason for all of that, Sans! But you never seemed to notice… Even if something had gone wrong, I would have reset as soon as he gave me back control.”

                “and what if he never gave you back control, huh? did you ever think of that?”

                “He wouldn’t do that,” the kid murmured.

                Silence returned a second time. No one made an effort to disperse it.

                Fatigue snuck up to Sans and draped itself from his limbs. He entertained the idea that time had started to collapse in on itself, and the exhaustion of his infinite past selves was stacking onto him. He sneered at the realization that Gaster would have called the idea preposterous and told him to read less science fiction.

                He dropped to a sitting position on the staircase and gave himself a once-over. Aside from being bone-tired—he chuckled despite everything—his wardrobe had been the only thing to suffer any damage. He tapped his fingers up and down his ribs and stared into the carpet.

                _why couldn’t he hurt me?_

“You know why.”

                Sans flinched and looked up.

The kid was pinning him with a cryptic look. “You already know why he couldn’t hurt you.”

Sans tried to smirk. “pap always said i was thick-headed, maybe i’m thick-ribbed too.”

The kid didn’t blink.

“fine, he was too weak, then. he said himself that he wasn’t what he used to be.”

The child dropped his voice a few octaves, as if trying to mimic Sans’. “The more you kill, the easier it becomes to distance yourself. The more you distance yourself, the less you will hurt. The more easily you can bring yourself to hurt others.”

“you been working on your impressions, kid? don’t worry, i remember what i said.”

“He didn’t _want_ to hurt you, Sans. So he _couldn’t_ hurt you.”

Sans looked up to the ceiling and tried to concoct a rebuttal.

Nothing came. The kid had him.

“why?”

“Because he said—because he _is_ sorry. I wanted you to see that.” The kid locked his gaze on the prongs of the extractor. “He doesn’t want to go back.”

Sans spent a moment counting the ceiling tiles. He rose to his feet with a groan and walked over to the coffee table. “nothing’s ever simple with you, is it?” He placed the extractor on the table and shook his head. “keep an eye on this for me. i’m gonna go take a nap.”

***** 

Sans woke on Pap’s race car bed—since he couldn’t have been bothered to untangle his own—and checked his watch. 2805.

                He frowned and looked around for an actual clock. A bone-themed one hung over Pap’s computer desk. Little, bleached femurs formed the hands and the face numbers. 6:43.

                He supposed he had slept through the night, or maybe he’d been out for a whole day, who could say. His bones ached to the marrow from all the magic he had spent in his fight with the kid. A jab in his spine told him to leap up and check on the extractor, but he squelched it and rolled over to catch a few more minutes.

                It didn’t matter anymore. He had lost. Either the kid was the greatest actor to ever live and this was all one sadistic game, or he was being honest and the demon felt some sort of regret. Sans ran an absent hand over his ribs and mused through his half-doze.

                If it was a game, then he couldn’t keep up. He wasn’t hard enough or cold enough to see through it. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe he didn’t want to be.

                Sans woke a second time and hauled himself out of bed. He threw Pap’s covers back into a more-or-less orderly state and headed out into the living room.

                It was dark. The kid had cut the lights at some point in the night. The mild glow of the soul fragment was the only thing he could pick out.

                Sans drew on his magic—cringing at how painful it was—and teleported to the light switch beside the front door.

Something stirred on the couch as illumination filled the room. It was the child, sprawled out on the pillows and trapped in fitful sleep. He squeezed his eyelids tighter and made an unconscious attempt to get away from the ceiling lamps.

                Sans noticed a few of the kid’s bandages had grown brown and blood-crusted overnight.

                The soul fragment rested on the kid’s chest like a house pet sleeping with its owner. It pulsed in unison with the kid’s breathing, which drew more than a hint of revulsion from Sans.

                The DT extractor lay on the ground, as if the kid had just tossed it there. Sans reached down and pocketed it.

                _you never know._

                Sans decided against waking the kid and wandered into the kitchen. He opened the fridge, and the usual selection of spaghetti, spaghetti, and spaghetti presented itself. He scowled—or at least attempted to.

                _nope._

He assembled whatever cooking materials he could find, and concluded he had enough to make either spaghetti or an omelet. He made the obvious choice.

                Sans let his mind wander as he tinkered with the stove and fished a skillet out of the cupboard. A warm blanket of normalcy settled over him and dulled the world’s edges.

                He cracked the eggs, added some salt, whisked the yolks, melted some butter in the skillet, and started cooking.

                The routine felt good. Following the same steps he had done a thousand times over made everything seem like it was business as usual.

                He poked his head out of the kitchen to check on the kid, and the sight of the soul fragment sent some fissures running through the illusion.

                He busied himself with a second omelet and an inane little question stuck in his skull. Were he and the kid still friends? The kid had claimed as much, even after the beating Sans had given him. A more important question sprang from the first. Should they be? Sans had no way of knowing how the guilt fell between the kid and his passenger. He liked to believe it was all on the demon, but things never came out black and white when the kid was involved.

                Sans killed the burner and prepared to dish out the omelets. It wasn’t until he pulled a second plate out of the cupboard that he realized he’d been making breakfast for two the whole time.

                He chuckled. “maybe.”

                Sans slid the kid’s omelet onto the coffee table and began to eat his own. The tiny clatter of silverware on ceramic slowly drew the kid from the pit of his dreams. His half-focused gaze shifted from Sans, to the omelet, to the soul fragment on his own chest. His expression changed from surprise, to hunger, to disappointment in rapid succession.

                “It didn’t work.”

                Sans spoke through a mouthful. “what do you mean?”

                “He’s still here, he didn’t come back.” The kid propped himself up and cupped the fragment in his hands like a baby bird.

                “that’s not how souls work, kiddo. i don’t know how he got there in the first place, but he’s human too, or at least used to be. you can’t just leave him on your chest and hope to absorb him by osmosis.”

                “What do I do, then?”

                “if i were you, i’d eat my omelet.”

                The kid balanced the fragment on his knee and picked up the plate. He had difficulty using his bandaged elbow, but the food quickly vanished, regardless.

                “Thanks for breakfast,” he mumbled.

                “any time.”

                Sans collected the dishes and headed back to the kitchen. He debated whether to wash them or just toss them in the sink. More importantly, would he ever come back here? He’d extracted the kid’s determination. The surface was there, and would always stay there. If he—

The kid’s voice cut through the house. “Sans! Sans, help! What’s happening? Sans, please!”

                The plates shattered on the kitchen tile, and Sans was beside the kid in an instant.

                “what!”

                The child hunched over on the couch and held the soul fragment a few inches from his face.

                “No, no, no, no. Don’t go.”

                The fragment seemed to be losing substance as the seconds ticked by. The mahogany-red hue was bleaching out of it, and the whole thing had become semi-transparent; the kid’s trembling fingers were visible through it. The glow the fragment gave off came in erratic bursts, and the resemblance to suffocation wasn’t lost on Sans.

                “What’s going on, Sans! Why is this happening! What do I do? Please, help me. Help _him_!”

                “…i don’t know.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's take a left turn. Bear with me for a moment. It's important.

_**Part 2** _

 

Asriel padded up to the oak tree outside his old house and rested a paw against its trunk. It was an ancient thing, so much so that it no longer sprouted leaves. Its dusky branches thrust into the air like the rigid limbs of a corpse.

                A photo gallery played in Asriel’s head, constantly comparing everything he saw to his own yellowed memories. He glanced back and forth from the house to the tree. Half-forgotten images superimposed themselves over reality. The tree was suddenly a sapling, and the windows of his home shone with inviting firelight.

                He blinked a few times and the figments crumbled. The tree was back to a gnarled behemoth and his home was as dark as a crypt.

                He traced the winding, cobblestone path up to his house, and tried to ignore the phantom voices of his family playing in the yard.

                “C’mon, throw it! No, not like that. You’re doing it wrong.”

                “None of that, let your brother throw as he pleases.”

                “Like this, ok? Watch me… No! Like this!—Mom, Asriel’s crying again!”

                He reached the empty doorframe and stopped to look at the chiseled dashes that ran up its sides. Before they had moved to New Home and ended the tradition, Mom had measured their heights after every birthday. He squinted at the tiny dates carved besides the dashes. They were all 201-something, too small to make out.

                He strained his neck to look up at the top of the frame. There was a single, deep groove for Dad. Asriel smiled, and the voices returned, unbidden.

                “You have grown so much, son. You have almost caught up to Asriel.”

                “It doesn’t matter… He’s gonna be as tall as Dad one day.”

                “Come now, do not say that. You just have not hit your growth spurt yet.”

                “Is it my turn, Tori? I have to admit, I’m more than a little excited.”

                “Well, if you really want to, honey… You are, um, the same height as last year.”

                “Oh, I see.”

                Like a flipbook, Dad’s every look of mock-disappointment ran through Asriel’s head. He gripped his elbows to control the sudden tremor through his body.

                The gloom inside the house was oppressive. Asriel groped for the light, but found nothing. He took a few blind steps and rammed muzzle-first into a wall. Hot tears began to collect behind his eyes.

                “Big kids don’t cry,” he whispered.

                Asriel reached into himself and stitched together whatever magic he could find. The gaping void he felt where his soul should have been sent a little fright sparking through him. He collected the magic in his paws and breathed life into a tiny orb of fire. It looked feeble and pathetic to him, but it cast enough light for him to see his own feet.

                He walked through the living room, holding the flame lantern out before him with both hands. He could hear Mom’s faint cheers in the back of his head.

                “Yes, perfect, just like that. Now feed the magic to it, slowly. Don’t smother it; it needs to breath. Excellent job, Asriel! Now, imagine that it is a bubble, or a cloud. Release it to the air. Let it float… Concentrate, give it some magic. Wait, no, not that much!... Hush, hush, do not cry. It is alright. We will try again tomorrow.”

                Asriel’s flame popped like a balloon and he was plunged into darkness. He scrambled to collect more magic, but there was nothing left. The familiar sensation of emptiness began to rise again in his chest.

                He found the wall and followed it into the kitchen. His paws brushed against a light switch and bathed the room in a weary, white glow. The remembered smell of a thousand meals taunted him.

                “Snail again? When can we have butterscotch?”

                “Remember, my child, we agreed one special treat each month.”

                “That’s not fair. Asriel loves snail. He gets his special treat _three_ times a month!”

                “Snail is better for you. Don’t you like—”

                “It’s because he’s your favorite! Isn’t it? I’m just the sad little thing you saved from the ruins!”

                “That is not true. I did not raise you to speak that way.”

                “You didn’t raise me! You _found_ me… No! Don’t touch me!”

                Asriel caught himself turning his head to watch Chara’s shadow dash out of the room and into the front yard. He tried to track the memory by pulling at it like a strand in a snarl of yarn.

                “Chara, wait! Mom will get mad if we run too far.”

                “What do you mean _we_? You can go back whenever you want! She won’t care as long as you’re fine!”

                “Stop saying that.”

                “Why? Because it’s true?—Let go! I said don’t touch me!”

                “Just listen, ok? Remember when we played swordfight with Mom’s cooking knives?”

                “I remember getting grounded for a week.”

                “And you got cut. And all the b—blood—it was so bad that you got as pale as a whimsun.”

                “So?”

                “Mom got so scared she started to cry.”

                “You and Dad cry all the time. Why is that—”

              “She never cries! Never, ever. I even asked Dad later. He said that that was the first time he’d ever seen her do it.”

                “…So?”

                “So she cares, Chara! She always has.”

                “Stop. I don’t want a hug.”

                “Dad says hugs make everything better.”

                “That’s because Dad is a s—sap.”

                “He says it’s okay to cry sometimes, too.”

                “I’m not c—cr—”

                Asriel focused his eyes and looked around the kitchen. He felt like something should have changed while he was off chasing memories, but nothing had. The only difference was that the sense of emptiness had grown more emphatic.

                He drifted into the living room and used the kitchen’s half-light to find the next switch. After a few moments, he had banished every shadow in the house. It felt good to pace the brightly-lit hallways and let the memories distract him.

                Curiosity struck, and he cracked the door into his and Chara’s old room. He was strangely surprised that it was all different, even though so much time had passed. The beds were both new, and Chara’s crayon-art had been taken down from the walls. Asriel stepped inside, feeling like a trespasser.

               His foot bumped a toy box and he reached down to rummage through it. Stitched ragdolls, carved wooden swords, scrap paper, and colored pencil-filled aluminum tins greeted his touch. They were all new to him, except for one toy at the bottom. A knife made of nicked, black plastic rested beneath a stack of paper. He drew it out and ran a claw along its edge.

                “What’s the surface like, Chara?”

                “I don’t want to talk about it.”

                “You can tell me. Mom and Dad aren’t around.”

                “I _said_ I don’t want to talk about it.”

                “How long will you not want to?”

                “Forever, ok?”

                “…Was it really that bad?”

                “Yeah…”

                “But why?”

                “Fine, you wanna know? Just don’t cry to Mom about it.”

                “I promise. Big kids don’t cry.”

                “You always say that… The surface is dirty. Everything is metal and concrete. It’s hot, and when it’s not hot it’s freezing. There’s food everywhere, but you go hungry because you don’t have the gold. There’re people everywhere, but everyone’s lonely because nobody cares. People die all the time and just disappear like a magic trick that nobody was watching.”

                “Then why does everyone want to get to the surface?”

                “It’s not all bad. It’s pretty. Blue. People just… ruin everything.”

                “Even if we make it, we can’t just drive the humans away. All the history books say they’re too strong.”

                “ _We_ could, Asriel. You and me, together. Wipe the surface clean; make it new.”

                “I don’t know, Chara. I’m scared.”

                “Do you trust me?”


	15. Chapter 15

                Asriel dropped the plastic knife into the toy box and sat down on one of the beds. It was stacked with frayed, multi-colored quilts that Mom had probably made.

                He began to rub at his ears and rock back and forth, a nervous tic he had kept since he was little. A chiding voice leapt out at him.

                “Asriel, you’re doing it again.”

                “What? Oh, sorry.”

                “You can’t let people see that you’re afraid.”

                “Why?”

                “Because they’ll use it against you! Don’t let anybody know how you’re feeling.”

                “I just get scared sometimes. Is that so bad?”

                “Yes it is! If you _have_ to show something, then show anger, not fear.”

                “But I don’t want to be angry.”

                “You’re so hopeless.”

                Asriel halted mid-rock and rested his paws on his lap. He whispered back to the empty room. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

                After a time, restlessness wound its way into Asriel’s legs. He walked a short circuit through the house, not entirely sure where to go or what to do. He knew he was waiting for something to happen, but he couldn’t bring himself to stare the thought in the face. It lurked in the dark corners of his mind like a predatory creature.

              He soon found himself outside Dad’s room. A hand-written sign taped to the front said “Room under renovations.” in bold block print. He tested the knob and the door gave. It swung open soundlessly, and the light from the hallway stretched out to paint the bedspread. He tried the switch, but the bulb was dead.

                The room was identical to Dad’s one in New Home, except for the dilapidation. Centuries of disuse had reduced the place to a faint shadow. The bed was moth-eaten and sunken, while Dad’s writing desk was so rotten it looked like it would disintegrate at a touch.

                Asriel shuffled inside, trying to dispel the fear that the door was going to slam shut and entomb him forever.

                 He wondered why Mom hadn’t taken care of the place like the rest of the house. Half-foreign memories slithered through his skull. _They separated after you died, idiot._

                Asriel covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. He held the pose for a long time. So long, that he began to grow dizzy from sensory deprivation. He reached out to steady himself on a bedpost, and opened his eyes.

                He was in New Home.

                He tried to blink the picture away like all the others, but this one wouldn’t go. The sleepy, gray color pallet that Dad had insisted on filled him with a longing so intense that he thought his chest would implode.

                He looked over to Dad’s bed and choked on his own breath. His brother rested beneath the covers, more ashen than the walls.

                “Hey, Asriel. You look a little scared.”

                Asriel felt memory’s invisible strings tug him over to the bed. “Shh, don’t talk. Save your magic.”

                Chara’s ivory-white lips parted in a silent chuckle. “For the hundredth time, dummy, I’m human. I don’t have magic.”

                “Oh, right…” Asriel reached out to hold Chara’s hand and tried to smile, despite how cold the fingers were.

                “It’s almost time. Are you ready, Asriel?”

                “I’m not sure anymore. Do we really have to do this?”

                Chara tried to furrow his brow, but lacked the energy. “It’s too late to go back. We made sure of that.”

                “I know, but—”

                “Don’t you want Mom to see the sun one day? Or Dad?”

                “Of course! I just don’t know if we sh—should have done this.”

                “You won’t leave me, will you?” A fevered light entered the kid’s eyes. “You promised you’d take my soul, Asriel. You promised!”

                “Yes, I promised.” He squeezed the stiff fingers and purple nails.

                “Don’t let me disappear. Not like all the others.”

                For the first and last time in his life, Asriel detected fear in his brother’s voice.

                And then he was gone.

                Burning, salt tears gushed out of Asriel as he raked at the bedspread with his claws. The decaying cloth came apart like wet tissue paper. A cloud of dust mushroomed off the bed and sent him into a coughing fit. He stumbled out of the room, half-blind, and crashed into the hallway wall. He crumpled to the ground and sobbed through his clenched jaws.

                It was some time later than he finally mustered the will to open his eyes. He was in Home again, or more likely he had never left it. The cheery lamplight made a meager attempt to convince him that everything was alright.

                He propped himself up and looked at his reflection in the long mirror that stretched half the hallway. He was a mess. The dust from the bed had peppered his fur gray, while his eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

                He sniffled at himself and tried to wipe away the grime. “Yeah, big kids don’t cry, right?”

                He blinked and saw an unnatural expression staring back out of his own face. It was toothy and distorted like a jack-o-lantern.

                _Boo hoo, brother’s dead. Oh no, wait. We saw him a few days ago when he was MURDERING us! He hacked our petals into confetti and smiled all the while._

Asriel snapped his eyes shut and willed away the image.

                He looked back.

                It was still there.

_And he had the nerve to reset; to come back and play the blameless saint. He really fooled you with that puppet of his, didn’t he?”_

Asriel closed his eyes and tried again. He grasped for a lifeline in the pit of his mind, and found comfort imagining Mom and Dad on the surface.

                A shrill laugh drew his gaze back to the mirror. _Oh, come on. I’m not just going to blow away on the wind if you close your eyes and think some happy thoughts. How stupid are you?_

“You’re not real! Go away!”

                _Ha! You think so? I’ve been around a lot longer than you have. Maybe you’re actually my figment, a silly dream I’m having about being a weakling. And when I wake up—”_

Asriel hurled a table lamp at the mirror. It exploded into slivers of glass and ceramic chunks. He stood and took gulping breaths to quell the fear-nausea in his stomach.

              A voice spoke over his shoulder, practically breathing into his ear. _“—I’ll gut that kid for ruining our life twice over.”_

Asriel ran. As fast as his numb limbs could carry him; out of the house, past the tree, and deep into the ruins.

                He kept catching glimpses of his own reflection. The twisted face grinned out of every still pond and metal surface.

                _We had everything, don’t you understand?! The body, the power; we were GOD!”_

                Asriel called out for help, but nobody came. He was probably the only monster left in the underground. It had been what he wanted, hadn’t it?

                _All you had to do was destroy him; wipe his lying face out of existence._

His side began to cramp, and his breath came in ragged bursts.

                _Just as we had finally won, you tripped over your own feet. You let his routine about mercy blind you to his nature. He’s just like US!”_

                Asriel collapsed on the outskirts of the ruins. Sunlight streamed through a massive hole in the ceiling and nourished a bed of golden flowers. He blanched at the sight of them.

                _Well weren’t you just the perfect little martyr. You gave your first life to the humans, your second to him, and now you’ve got nothing left. Once it’s my turn I’m taking it all back, one bloody piece at a time._

                Asriel screamed into the cavern. “SHUT UP!”

                The voice dissipated like smoke.

                He curled himself into a tight ball and tried to breathe through his hiccups.

                “…not real…” he whispered. “…not real…”

                There was a profound stillness about the room. It was like one giant photograph. The particles of dust dancing through the sunbeams were the only indication it wasn’t. Asriel’s gaze rested on the flowers, for no other reason than he couldn’t marshal himself to look away.

                An observation eventually prodded at his inert mind. A piece of stone was jutting out of the grass between a few clusters of gold; it was too angular to be natural. A rudimentary impulse dragged him to his feet and across the room. He looked down at the rock.

                It was some sort of tablet or a tombstone. An engraving marched across its surface and beneath a blanket of soil.

                He could make out the first three letters.

                **_C-H-A-_**


	16. Chapter 16

                Asriel traced the etchings in the stone with his eyes. His tired mind attempted and failed to draw any connections, but his body seemed to know something that the rest of him didn’t. He dropped to his knees and began digging at the obscured half of the stone. He shaped his paws into shovels and hurled soil across the cavern. It pattered against the flowers like fat, brown rainfall.

                His movements grew faster with each revealed letter, **_R-A D-R-E_** , eventually climbing to a frenzy of gouging and scraping.

                He fell back to a sitting position, barely aware of his throbbing and broken claws.

                The light from the hole above smeared the dirty surface of the tombstone. Asriel felt like he was underwater; it took him a full minute to read six words.

                **_Chara Dreemurr_**

**_Beloved brother and son_ **

                Asriel clutched at his head. A voice from the distant past whispered inside.

                He started to drown.

                “Asriel.”

                “Chara?”

                “Can you hear me?”

                “I can hear, but where are you? Your b—body is here. You’re so cold and you’re not breathing…”

                “Calm down. Everything’s fine.”

                “What are you talking about? You’re dead. You’re dead, Chara!”

                “It worked, dummy. We’re together, just like we planned. Can’t you feel the difference?”

                “It feels strange, wrong.”

                “It’s fine. We’ve got an eternity to get used to it.”

                “Ok, I’ll try.”

                “Isn’t this great, though? We have so much power now. We could do anything!”

                “Yeah, but what do we do about your… body?”

                “Here, let me use the arms. Let’s go to the surface.”

                “You said six, right Chara?”

                “Right… six.”

                Asriel pulled himself free from the riptide of memory and took a breath so deep his sternum popped. He began to cough, and shielded his eyes from the tombstone.

                 He waited for something to happen. Maybe he’d break down and cry again, or maybe Chara would erupt from his grave and drag him to hell.

                Nothing did. There was just the pain in his paws and the crushing weight of silence.

                The voice from the mirror returned, but was subdued at a sort of half-whisper. _Why are we even here? It’s a hunk of rock, so what? Why waste time on these memories?_

“Go away,” Asriel murmured.

                The voice’s volume rose. _He’s not our friend, idiot! He made that painfully clear when he mulched us just for fun! This is getting ridiculous! How do you not hate him? All this sentimental slop you wallow in means nothing! He never cared about us from the very beginning!_

                “You’re wrong.”

                _How can you be this dense? Let me spell it out for you, even though you already know. He USED us. All he ever wanted was power so he could get his revenge on the surface; OUR power, to be specific._

                “No, he just wanted to help ev—”

                _To think we actually blamed ourselves when the plan backfired. We were doing the world a favor and we didn’t even know it. Based on his rampage from last loop, there’s no way he would have stopped after wiping out the humans. But honestly, we should have seen it coming. The signs were all there, we just didn’t like looking at them._

Asriel tried to push the voice away.

It cooed mockingly. _But,_ _since you’re so intent on fishing for memories, let’s go right ahead. Tell me when you finally notice it._

The world bottomed out, and Asriel plummeted through an ocean of black. It filled his mouth and eyes, reducing his screams to gurgles. He couldn’t breathe, or even think, as the black seeped into his head.

*****

                Asriel stood on the surface and stared into the sun.

                He inhaled the sweet wind and felt the pressure of tears begin to build.

                A commanding voice spoke beside him and inside him, in an eerie sort of stereo. “Don’t cry, Asriel. Now isn’t the time.”

                Asriel looked down at the corpse he carried in his arms. “Are you sure, Chara?”

                “We have to be brave, for everyone still trapped inside. No tears.”

                “I’ll try.”

                “Ok, good. Let me use our body, I know where to go.”

                An odd sensation filled Asriel as his legs jerked down the mountain path. It was as if he’d eaten too much pie, but the uncomfortable, stuffed feeling filled his entire body instead of just his stomach. It made his fur stand on end. There was too much inside.

                Chara cursed as Asriel’s feet caught on an exposed root. They nearly toppled, but Asriel threw his weight against a tree to keep them upright.

                “It’s harder to move you than I thought it would be.”

                “Do you need help?”

                “No! Let me do this, Asriel.”

                It took a great deal of time to clear the slopes and the canopy of trees, but they eventually emerged onto a flat patch of dirt at the base of the mountain. A city loomed off on the horizon. It was a stout, repulsive thing. From that distance, it resembled a tumble of cinderblock fragments and broken glass.

                “Is that where you lived?”

                “’Lived’ isn’t the right word…”

                They walked a series of desolate roads as they made their way to the city; from dirt to gravel to an eight-lane highway. But there was no one around. A small part of Asriel felt somewhat disappointed he hadn’t gotten a chance to see a car. His thoughts flicked back to Chara’s drawings of monster trucks and semis.

                “You don’t have to worry about that,” Chara muttered. “You’ll see plenty.”

                “What? How did you—”

                “We share a head, remember. It’s hard not to hear when you shout your thoughts.”

                As the fine details of the city began to reveal themselves, Asriel noticed a cluster of black, monolithic buildings thrusting out of the center. A sea of green fields and oak trees surrounded it. A huge wall traced the outer perimeter, separating it all from the rest of the city.

                “That’s The Heart, where all the people with gold live. That’s where we’re going.”

                “Alright, but uh… what about your body?”

                “We’re going to bury me.”

                “B—bury?”

                 A few hot flashes streaked through Asriel’s head. He saw a tiny village of thatch and wood. Lemon-yellow flowers carpeted the ground and danced on the breeze.

                He blinked and the village was gone. Colossal, mechanical beasts gnawed at the earth with all the fervor of starvation. The flowers beneath their treads were quickly crushed into the mud.

                Chara’s coarse laugh dispersed the images. “Tell me the next time you’re looking over my shoulder, Asriel.”

                “No, no, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to look, I—”

                “Do you remember near the end, when I asked Dad to show me flowers from my village?”

                “Yeah, he spent the whole day trying to smash the barrier with his fists.”

                “Well, my village has been gone for a long time. The people in The Heart tore it down so they could strip-mine the land under it.”

                “Then where did you live?”

                “Everyone in the village got relocated to the city. We didn’t last long, though. Hunger, cold, and… other things took everyone but me. I was the one that was too stupid to just give up and die.”

                “Oh… I…” Asriel grasped for some consolation to offer, but all his ideas came up hollow.

                “The flowers aren’t gone, though, even though everything else is. The people in The Heart thought they were pretty, so they planted them all over the place.”

                They halted mid-step.

                “Look, Asriel. You can see them all the way from here; those specks of yellow on the green. I promised myself I’d touch those flowers again. That’s why we’re going there. That’s where I want my body to be.”

                “The wall looks pretty tall. How will we get over it?”

                Chara’s next laugh came in long, pealing waves. Asriel hunkered in a corner of his mind and waited for it to end.

                “You’re joking, right? We’ll going THROUGH it! We’re going to reduce that worthless place to rubble, take our six… and then—”


	17. Chapter 17

                “Just push it with your mind. Use your magic to smash it.”

                Asriel glared at the four-story wall and tried to imagine the banded steel crumpling like scrap paper. He felt magic churn weakly in his chest, but nothing happened.

                “Asriel! Rip it apart!”

                “I’m trying.”

                “Get out of the way. Let me do it.”

                An invisible hand pushed Asriel’s consciousness to one side, and he was suddenly a spectator in his own body.

                A maelstrom woke inside him, and the wall exploded into shrapnel. It knifed though the air, shattering windowpanes and converting cars into pincushions.

                Chara cackled. “See? It’ll never happen if you don’t want it to.”

                The commotion drew attention, and humans began to spill out into the streets. Gasps and screams filled the air as they caught sight of Asriel.

                Every scary story about the surface world that Asriel had ever heard came rushing out of the depths of his mind. His throat grew tight, and a perceptible tremble entered his limbs.

                “Don’t be scared. You don’t have to worry about them. They’re all weak.”

                Chara shifted his corpse’s weight and swept one of Asriel’s arms through the air. Magic slashed a twenty-foot arc into the pavement and elicited another cumulative scream from the crowd. Some of the humans fled down the street and into the back alleys.

                “Like cockroaches,” Chara spat.

                Asriel reached inside to prod at the borders of Chara’s soul. “Stop.”

                Chara seemed to bristle, but acquiesced. “You’re right. First thing’s first.”

                They passed through the scrap-strewn space that used to be a wall, and set foot in a meadow.

                Aside from the black spires in the distance, Asriel’s whole field of vision was nothing but a patchwork of rolling greens set before a blue sky.

                A bitterness creeped around the edges of Asriel’s mind.

                “Welcome to The Heart,” Chara murmured.

                The gathering of humans trailed in their wake at a healthy distance, gawking at the greenery and muttering.

                “I take it back,” Chara said. “They aren’t like cockroaches. Cockroaches have more sense. If these people had any idea why we’re here, then they’d be running away, not forming a parade.”

                “We only need six, right Chara?”

                There was a long silence, and their feet hesitated. “…Asriel, we—”

                The sound of clanging metal and whirling gears rose from over the next hill. A quiver of terror ran through the human crowd, and several of them started to flee.

                “What is it?”

                Chara’s voice was atonal and hard as stone. “Harvester.”

                An immense machine rounded the hill and trundled towards them on steel-plated treads. It was little more than a box of riveted metal and spindly appendages. A malevolent orange light shined out of the square sheet of glass that served as its eye.

                “What is THAT!?” Asriel tried to turn and run, but his feet were nailed to the grass by someone else.

                “It collects the food that grows here, and _disposes_ of any trespassers that try to steal from The Heart. It’s why they never needed any guards.”

                A black mass of loathing radiated from Chara, and began to suffocate Asriel.

                “We need to run,” Asriel coughed.

                “If you’re afraid, then GET OUT OF THE WAY!”

                Asriel was slammed aside in his mind. His body dropped Chara’s corpse and raised both arms towards the approaching harvester. The maelstrom returned, so strong that Asriel thought his ribs would crack apart.

                The harvester shuddered to a stop and extended its bladed limbs towards them.

                Asriel blinked and the limbs were gone. They had been ripped out of their joints and tossed across the field like a handful of twigs.

                A screaming sort of laughter flooded out of Asriel’s mouth, and the harvester lifted into the air. The metal plating that made up its body began to shear off piece by piece and plummet to the ground. After a few moments the whole thing had diminished to an unrecognizable lump of torn steel and dripping crude oil.

                It reminded Asriel of the way Chara peeled apples with a steak knife.

                Even then, Chara didn’t stop. He began to slam the thing against the hill, over and over, creating muddy craters with each impact. Searing fragments of memory brushed against Asriel. He saw harvesters and ears of corn splattered with blood. There had been people, too—that had meant the world to him, if only he could remember their faces.

                “CHARA STOP! Stop it right now! It’s dead, ok!? It’s dead!”

                The maelstrom evaporated.

                The mangled chunk of slag hit the ground and remained very still.

                “Oh, right… It broke…”

                There was complete silence, not even the faint moan of wind in Asriel’s ears. The humans stood like a forest of statues and just stared.

                Chara scooped up his corpse and continued walking. The nearest patch of flowers wasn’t far.

*****

              “I don’t like this anymore, Chara. Let’s just forget this and go home. Mom and Dad will forgive us, they always do.”

                Chara said nothing and kept shuffling Asriel’s feet.

                “This place is scary and sad. It’s not even better up here! Let’s go back and be happy with the world that we have. Please.”

                “That’s true… It _is_ scary. It _is_ sad. Because of them!” He pointed Asriel’s arm at the cluster of humans still trailing them. “And them!” He waved at the black buildings in the distance. “But we can fix that; we can wipe it all clean! You just have to trust me, Asriel.”

                “You always say that, but what do you mean? You said we just needed six and we could fix everything!”

                “Yes, at first, but—”

                “’At first’!?”

                “You don’t get it! They aren’t just going to let monsters live up here. They would rather turn us all to dust than give away a single acre. I understand these creatures better than you ever will. If we don’t get rid of them, then they’ll get rid of us!”

                “’Creatures’? Look at them, Chara. They’re just like you!”

                “Don’t ever say that again! I’m nothing like them.”

                “You promised me we only needed six! You _promised!_ ”

                “Well I lied, alright? This is too important for you to get all sappy on me. Don’t you want Mom and Dad to be happy?”

                Asriel’s words were barely a whisper in his head. “If we do this, they won’t be happy… They’ll be ashamed.”

                 “Shut up!”

                Chara dropped his corpse like a sack of stones and whirled to face the humans. Words ripped out of Asriel’s throat and boomed across the fields.

                “You don’t know what I’ve seen! You never will! The things they build, the terrible things they do. If you give them mercy or power then they’ll just turn it into a weapon to destroy you. We HAVE to kill them, before they—”

                “We gave you mercy, Chara. _I_ gave you power. What are you doing with it?”

                “I SAID SHUT THE HELL UP, ASRIEL!”

                The whole field spontaneously combusted. Fire snaked up hillsides, devouring every blade of grass. The earth coughed billowing, black smoke into the windless air.

                “If you don’t have the stomach to do what’s right, then I will!”

                Chara sent Asriel’s body stomping through the flames and towards the humans. They cowered on an island of green in a burning sea. Some of them had taken off their coats and were using them to beat at the encroaching fire.

                “They’re just going to die anyways, Asriel; to hunger, cold, or each other. I’m doing them a favor. At least I can make it quick.”

                Shrieks rang out as the crowd noticed Asriel’s approach. They retreated to the far side of the island, except for one.

                A scrawny human, barely out of his teens, blocked the way. He grinned like only the dead can, and dug his heels into the dirt. He tried to ward Asriel off with a rusted, two-foot pipe.

                Chara used magic to wrench the makeshift weapon away, so viciously that it dislocated the human’s shoulder and dragged him to the ground.

                Asriel felt energy pool into his paw, and a blade of green magic suddenly sprouted. It sheathed his arm and quivered like molten stained-glass.

                “Just don’t look. I can do this all myself.”

                The blade descended.

                A peculiar calm came over Asriel. He stretched out to encompass Chara’s soul in a stifling embrace, and their body jolted to a halt.

                “No more, Chara. No more.”

                The rage that seeped out of Chara burned so hot Asriel was certain he would just melt away. “Let go of me! Let go of me RIGHT NOW!”

                Their body twitched and jittered as Asriel suppressed Chara’s every command.

                The human took the opportunity and rolled out of the path of the blade. He retrieved his pipe with his good arm and lashed out.

                Asriel took a blow to the temple and a starburst of agony filled his skull. He staggered to his knees, but didn’t relinquish his hold on Chara.

                “Let’s go home. We don’t have to do this.”

                “Of course we do! It’s us or them!”

                The human continued to strike at Asriel with desperate, clumsy motions. He called out for help, and the crowd surged forward, sensing the moment.

                “Look at this!” Chara screamed. “They’re all trying to kill us! Why won’t you believe me?! Why won’t you trust me!?”

                “They’re just scared,” Asriel whispered. “Everyone gets scared sometimes.”

                A hail of punishment came from the mob. Fists, sticks, pipes, and chains all fell upon Asriel’s rigid body. He could feel himself starting to unravel.

                “We’re going to die, Asriel! WE’RE GOING TO DIE! Please, just get out of my way!”

                “…No.”

                Resignation suddenly stilled the storm of Chara’s emotions.

                “You just couldn’t believe in me, could you? Your own, damn brother… Fine, then… Fine. I guess this is the end.”

                “I’m sorry, Chara.”

                A brittle chuckle fluttered through Asriel’s mind. “You traitor.”


	18. Chapter 18

                Sans measured his words. “when i say ‘i don’t know’, it means i don’t know, alright kid?”

                The child paced the carpet, keeping his eyes glued to the soul fragment. It had faded so much that it resembled a piece of blown glass. “No, but, you’re a scientist, right? You’ve got that lab. You have to know _something_!”

                “souls aren’t my department. that’s alphys’ bag, and i can practically guarantee she wouldn’t know anything about this.”

                “Then what do I do!” The kid was just shy of screaming.

                Sans’ bones began to itch. He crossed his arms and sank deeper into his chair. _you’d be having a field day if you were here, gaster. a brand new phenomenon for your records._

                “you two spent a lot of time in the loops. did you not learn anything about this after three hundred years?”

                “Well, I don’t know… maybe.”

                “huh?”

                “I don’t really remember most of it.”

                “most?”

                “…any of it. But Chara does. He just can’t tell us right now.”

                “wait, so have you just been taking him at his word this whole time? you have _no_ idea what he’s really been up to?”

                “Sans, that isn’t important right now! How do I fix this?”

                Sans ran an anxious hand over his skull and scratched at his spine. “ok, fine. my theory—based on _nothing_ —is that he’s some kind of human soul remnant… thing.”

                “What does that mean?”

                “that he’s probably the remains of a _really_ old human soul. and he’s starting to, uh… fade away from old age?—i don’t know, kid! this all stopped making sense the moment i plugged in that watch.”

                “Then maybe you should have listened to me in the first place! We’d be watching your first sunrise right now!”

                Sans shrugged off the verbal blow. “that’s my theory, ok? he’s too old to sustain himself without _some_ kind of host. end of story.”

                “And it can’t be me?”

                Sans paused for an uncomfortable amount of time, examining the kid’s expression.

                “…it looks that way.”

                The child’s face grew hard. He took a hot breath and stepped towards Sans. “Then you do it. You absorb him.” He held the fragment up at arm’s length.

                The agitation that had been slowly heaping onto Sans’ shoulders dissolved. Something cold and sharp filled its place.

                “you wanna run that by me again, pal?”

                “You have to save him, Sans. I can’t do it.”

                “guess i’m not just hearing things then… do you know what you’re asking of me? do you have any idea?”

                The kid drew closer. “Please.”

                “stop! now!” Sans poured all the menace he could into his voice. “if you take another step, you are _really_ not going to like what happens next.”

                The child actually smiled. “He always said that was one of your favorite threats.”

                “heh, i bet. that demon probably heard it a lot in the thousands of loops he spent killing me.” Sans materialized a pair of Gaster blasters. He grinned to mask the pain of drawing on his dwindling magic. “don’t want to use stale material, do i? let’s try something new. if you take another step, you’ll die horribly.”

                “His name is Chara. And he isn’t a demon.”

                “you seem pretty confident for not knowing a thing about him. if you’ve got no proof, then it’s just his words versus the watch. how do you know he’s not playing us for—actually, here’s a better question, how do _i_ know you two aren’t playing _me_ for a chump?

                maybe he wants a brand new monster body to wreak havoc with on the surface, and gullible ol’ sans is the prime candidate. you feign some sentimental tears to butter me up, and i just hand myself over. is that it?

                Better yet, maybe—”

                “Sans, please.” The kid took a deliberate step forward and closed his eyes.

                “i said if you take one more step!—”

                He took another.

                Sans teleported across the room in a violent flurry, sending his chair crashing to the ground. He gathered magic in his blasters, and their maws began to glow fluorescent white. His marrow burned from the exertion, but he masked it with a snarl.

                “do you really want to die? because you aren’t coming back again if you do!”

                “We can all still leave together. Nobody has to die. You’ll make the right decision, I know it!”

                “from over here the right decision seems like cutting my losses and blasting you into dust!”

                _the facts will be the only friends i have left._

                The child made his way towards Sans at a snail’s pace. He kept his head bowed, as if he were trying to keep rain out of his eyes.

                Sans seared a trench into the floor between them with his blasters. “you’re not getting another warning!”  

                The child just hopped over it and kept walking.

                “he’s too dangerous, don’t you get it? he could ruin everything! why can’t you just let him disappear? it’s nature’s course. he’ll be one less threat to worry about.

                “I can’t do that!”

                “why not!”

                “Because that means I’ll have failed.”

                “failed _him_? i don’t think you owe him that much.”

                “No… myself.”

                “you’re not some savior, kid. it’s not your job.”

                The kid stopped two feet in front of Sans and stretched out his arm to offer the fragment. “Please.”

                Sans’ eye flared and a cage of bones materialized around the kid’s body, so tight that he couldn’t move a millimeter. The fragment rested on the kid’s flattened palm. A few tiny fractures peppered its surface.

                “i won’t do this, frisk. not even for you.”

                The child slumped against his prison. Sans could tell he would have collapsed to the floor without its support. They locked eyes, and the kid’s seemed so ancient and world-weary at that moment.

                His words were muddled and broken. “But he’ll die… and I can’t go back.”

                “he died a long time ago.”

                The kid gazed vacantly at the fragment and said no more.

                Sans took a few steps back and dismissed the cage. The kid’s legs folded under him, and he fell to an awkward kneeling position. He drew the fragment in close to his chest.

                “i’m not the only one that’d turn you down, kid. if everyone knew about his dirty past, then there wouldn’t be a monster alive willing to share a body with him… you just can’t save everyone.”

                The glaze left the kid’s eyes and he straightened at some thunderbolt epiphany. He mouthed a single word that Sans couldn’t make out and sprang to his feet. He sprinted for the door with the fragment in hand.

                “stop!” Sans reached out to pin him with his magic, but there was so little left that the kid just pulled away.

                “Yes I can!” he roared.

*****

                Asriel regained consciousness by increments. It started with a dull throbbing in his paws, and then an awareness of absolute stillness. There were no shrieking voices or crackling infernos, no buffets of wind or washes of heat.

                He didn’t want to open his eyes. He imagined that he was safe in bed and a vivid nightmare had just startled him awake.

                He took a long breath and relaxed his thoughts.

                A sickly-sweet voice popped his bubble. _Did you have fun? Was brother the misunderstood angel you remember him to be?_

Asriel’s eyes snapped open. Everything had shifted to one side, and he was plastered against a wall. A blender of vertigo spun his world for a moment, before he realized that he was on the ground.

                He lifted his head to look around, and a chill arced through him. He was curled up on Chara’s tombstone like it was a mattress.

                He jumped to his feet, and the voice let out a giggle. _I’m going to take a wild guess and say no._

Half-light trickled out of the hole in the ceiling above. Asriel couldn’t tell if the sun was rising or setting. He supposed it wasn’t important. He had nowhere to be.

                _But seriously, what was your favorite part? I can’t decide between the way he laughed during the fight with the harvester, or the way he tried to gut that human with your own magic._

                Asriel started to step off the tombstone, but his foot caught on the lip. He went down face-first into a cluster of flowers. His body felt stiff, like a wicker shell. He tried to lift himself up, but his limbs moved at a two-second delay to his thoughts. He floundered in the ocean of yellow until he exhausted himself.

                _Wow, this is hard to look at. It’s actually almost sad. I hope this feeling vanishes with you when you finally go. If I remember right, pity got us killed and love left us alone to rot. I think I’d be better off without them._

                Asriel rolled onto his back and spat out dirt and flower petals. “Why are you talking to me?”

                The voice in his head grew shrill. _To prove a point! If you trust people then they use you. If you pity people then they stab you in the back. If you love people then they cast you aside as soon as you become an inconvenience. Have you not managed to pick up on ANY of this!?_

“Things didn’t work out for us, but everyone else is happy. Isn’t that something?”

                _Oh, yeah. That’ll mean a WHOLE lot to me when you’re gone and I’m back to being a flower. You know what, I’ll check in on them for you. Make sure they’re happy before I turn them to dust._

Asriel pushed himself to a sitting position with what little remained of his strength. “I won’t let you do that.”

                Right, _like you’ll be able to stop me at that point._

                “Why can’t you just leave them alone? It’s not all about us.”

                _Because we’ve been cheated too many times! Chara’s out there with a brand new body, enjoying the sunlight, while we’re down—_

                The slap of sneaker against stone echoed out of the corridor leading back towards Home. A small child, dressed in a dirty, striped sweater appeared out of the dark. He slumped against the cave wall for support, and took trembling steps. His entire body rattled with each breath, but he seemed to be trying to force out words.

                _Speak of the devil…_

                “Frisk, why are—” Asriel’s voice died in his throat as he glimpsed the thing in the child’s hand.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One thing that always bothered me about the Genocide route was that Flowey chides you for resetting at any point in it. 
> 
> "Really, Chara? Well, do what you will. I'll be waiting for you!"
> 
> It seemed like an oversight to me that if you exit out of the game in the middle of killing Flowey, you still get the same response. I have the suspicion that he'd feel a bit more vindictive at being murdered by his 'inseparable playmate.' He wouldn't forget the betrayal if he could help it.

               

                For the first time in centuries, Sans ran.

                He pounded down Snowdin’s empty streets, kicking up slush with every stride. His slippers flew off in the first twenty seconds, but he didn’t bother to retrieve them. There was no time. The kid was already out of sight. Sans trained his eyes on the snow and tried to pick out the kid’s tracks.

                He cursed himself for squandering his magic. All those dramatic threat displays had tapped him out. He felt like an empty ketchup bottle. He could tell he’d black out—or possibly die—if he siphoned much more.

                He settled on a pair of sneaker prints and chased them into the woods.

                Within a couple minutes, he was already gasping and wheezing. He stumbled into a tree to pause and catch his breath.

                This was bad, _incredibly_ bad. He wondered if any version of himself had ever managed to screw things up this much. Twenty-eight hundred times was a lot of chances, but somehow he doubted it. Why had he given back the extractor? Why hadn’t he just wasted the kid? Had he doomed everyone just because he lacked the stomach to make the right call?

                Sans snarled and pushed himself off the tree. No. He had enough for one last blast. If he could destroy the fragment before the kid transplanted it, then he could still guarantee everyone’s happy end.

                He continued to trail the sneaker prints until they were the only marks in the otherwise unbroken powder.

                He couldn’t understand why the kid was going this way. It led nowhere. If his plan was to force the fragment on another monster, as Sans suspected, then the surface would have been a better option.

                Whatever the kid was up to, Sans couldn’t suppress the feeling of fear that clawed at the inside of his ribcage.

*****

                The child staggered through the flowers, moving with a dogged purpose towards Asriel. His face was blotchy red, and he threw out a half-word between each heaving breath.

                “Asri—help—time—”

                The voice loomed over Asriel’s shoulder. _Why do you think he’s here? To gloat? To torment us?_

                Asriel tried to rise to his feet, but the joints in his legs wouldn’t work. His gaze never left the thing that the child clutched in his hand.

                “F—frisk, what is that?”

                The child wobbled closer and held the thing up. He shielded it with his free hand as if it were a candle in a windstorm.

                It looked like a small, heart-shaped lens; nearly transparent, but with a discernable red tint. Its surface was warped and cracked, as if some unseen force was bending it before Asriel’s eyes.

                The kid sank to his knees and offered the thing with a smile.

                Asriel made a scrambling retreat, dragging his numb body through the grass with his arms.

                “Frisk, what is that!”

                _Oh, isn’t this just delicious?_

                The child wiped sweat from his face and adopted a puzzled expression. “It’s Chara… Don’t you remember?”

                Oily laughter splattered the inside of Asriel’s skull. _Is this really happening? This has to be some kind of trick. It’s just too good to be true._

“What are you doing here? Why is he like that?”

                The kid glanced back at the exit of the cave. “There’s no time, Asriel. He’s going to die! You have to absorb him. You did it before, right?”

                Something forced itself out of Asriel’s mouth. “ _Are you some kind of idiot? Give me ONE good reason why I should do that.”_

The child leaned back as if he’d been slapped. “Asriel?...”

                Asriel clamped his paws over his mouth and tried to swallow the feeling in his throat.

                The kid worked his jaw a few times as he tried to form words. “But, he’s your brother. You—”

                Asriel’s paws pried themselves off his mouth. “ _Brother!? No, no, no, that ended when he decided to dice me into compost. I have no brother.”_

He made a second attempt to cover his mouth, but his arms wouldn’t move. They just quivered in the air.

                The child’s breathing grew fast and shallow. He let out a few whimpers of protest and looked around as if he’d find a counter-argument floating in the air.

                “No, that’s not fair! It’s not supposed to happen like this!”

                “ _Not fair? Oh, that’s cute; you don’t get it. This is perfectly fair. I lost my soul because of him, now he’ll lose his soul because of me. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”_

Tears began to trickle from the kid’s eyes. They streaked down his face, through the layers of sweat and grime.

                “But I thought…”

                _“You thought wrong._ _We’re just going to sit here and watch him fade out of existence.”_

Asriel pooled all of his will into his right paw and formed a fist. He struck himself on the cheek and toppled to the ground.

                “SHUT UP!” He shrieked into the dirt.

                The voice shrank to an indistinct murmur in a corner of Asriel’s mind.

                He tried to lift himself up again, but his arms had stopped working. It took all his energy just to turn his head and look up at the kid.

                He grinned. “Sorry about that, Frisk. Sometimes I speak before I think.”

                The dam broke, and the child’s trickle of tears became a river. He shuffled closer on his knees and reached out to touch Asriel. “What’s happening to you?”

                “Nothing I wasn’t expecting.” Asriel flinched away from the fragment in the kids hand like it was a poisoned blade. “S—so that’s Chara? He looks different from before.”

                “He’s fading away. Sans pulled him out of me with some kind of machine. We need to save him!”

                “Frisk… I’m not sure if we should. Don’t you know what he’s done?”

                “He’s a good person now, Asriel, you have to believe me. Sans couldn’t, but I know you can!”

                “ _Smiley Trashbag never was the trusting type. He had good reason for it this time around.”_

“What?!”

                Asriel gnashed his teeth and banished the voice. “But you don’t know about Chara! I do! He—”

                “Why do you two keep saying that!?” The kid’s voice boomed against the stone walls. “I bet I know him better than anyone!

                When I woke here the second time, he spoke to me. He said he was sorry, and he begged me to erase him—he _begged_ , Asriel! He said he didn’t deserve to live anymore, that everyone would be happy without him.

                If he was so terrible, why would he say that?”

                “ _Because he knew you’d be too weak to actually go through with it. And he thought he could trick you into getting him to the surface. Looks like he was right, for the most part._ ”

                Asriel started to stammer out a quick contradiction, but it faded within the first word. It had been exactly what he intended to say.

                “That isn’t true!” The kid surged to his feet and placed a hand over his heart. “He taught me about the underground. He protected me from Papyrus and Undyne and Asgore. He saved everyone!”

                _“What does that prove? Did he tell you about how good he was at manipulating Toriel and Asgore? Did he tell you about all the crocodile tears he spilled to get his way as a kid? Face it. He’s using you just like he used me.”_

The child fell back a step. “How can you say these things?”

                “Frisk, I’m sorry, but Flow—but it’s true. Chara… wasn’t really the greatest person.”

                “I know that! But—”

                “Do you? Do you know that he used your body to go on a rampage and kill everyone in the underground? He killed m—he killed Flowey inside New Home and scattered his petals across the furniture. Who do you think Chara is?”

                “Asriel, that was three hundred years ago! People change!”

                “ _What are you babbling_ —” Asriel grimaced. “What do you mean, Frisk?”

                “He spent the last three hundred years in a time loop, regretting every decision he ever made. He’s not the same Chara you knew. Not anymore.”

                Asriel closed his eyes and tried to think. A wavering bubble of hope swelled inside him. If this was all true, then he could keep his body; stop Flowey from ever coming back; see his parents again after all these years; finally make amends. All he had to do—

                _You realize they’re just mocking us, right? It’s a game they’re playing at our expense. They’ll dangle this chance in front of us until we finally accept, then snatch it away. It’s what I’d do. Looks like this Frisk kid is the perfect playmate for Chara._

“Is it true?” Asriel whispered. “Do you have proof? Anything?”

The child knelt and held Asriel’s hand.

“oh, it’s true.”

A stocky figure rounded the bend in the corridor and clinked towards them. He rolled a metal object in his hand, and glanced down at it every few steps.

“at least the part about the three hundred years. as for the regret… can a demon even feel regret?”


	20. Chapter 20

             

                “i gotta say, pal. i really wanted to be wrong about this. i mean _really_ wanted to be. but here you are, trying to sell the same corny shtick to someone else.”

                Sans glanced at the monster sprawled out on the ground. His white fur and humanoid build made Sans assume he was from Snowdin.

                Sans attempted to scowl. “was he not feeling cooperative at first? did you rough him up to put him in a more talkative mood? i thought chara was the violent one. you picking up his bad habits?”

                The child’s eyes darted from Sans to the fallen monster.

                Sans checked his watch as the kid formulated an excuse. 2805. Good.

                “This isn’t what you think it is, Sans. I didn’t hurt Asriel. Something’s happening to him.”

                “asriel?” The name sent a rusted memory into motion. “asriel, the king’s son, asriel? the one that died _centuries_ ago?”

                “He didn’t die! Well, he did, but… He’s here now. He can absorb Chara, so you don’t have to.”

                Sans stalked over to get a better view of the monster. “you should really leave things to the professionals, kid. i’m the comedian here, remember?”

                He drew close enough to look at the monster’s face. He didn’t know what he had expected. All he knew about Asriel were rumors and hearsay. He had to admit that the monster bore a resemblance to Asgore, but a lot of monsters looked similar.

                A cloud of fear crossed the monster’s face as Sans studied him. _“You better stop looking at me like that or I’ll—”_ He snapped his teeth shut to muffle the next few words.

                The child propped the monster up with one arm and shielded the soul fragment with the other. “It’s not a joke. This is Asriel Dreemurr, Chara’s brother.”

                Sans crushed his surprise before it could snowball out of control. He chuckled and tilted his head. “brother, huh? ok, then. so that _thing_ —” he pointed to the fragment “—was the first human that ever fell down here? he was the king and queen’s pet project that got asriel killed and sent the whole underground into spiraling depression?”

                The monster gave an almost-imperceptible shake of his head. “He wasn’t a pet project, he was my…” He searched for a word and his expression suddenly shifted. He growled and bared his fangs. “ _He was my parasite! He ruined my life!”_

                “yeah, parasite sounds about right.”

                The child glanced between them. “Don’t say that! It hurts his feelings when you call him that.”

                The monster cringed. “No, I didn’t say—I didn’t mean to say that, Frisk. I’m sorry.”

                Sans slid a few inches over to see if he could get a clear shot at the fragment, but the kid held it too closely. The idea of punching a hole through him with a blaster beam appeared in Sans’ head, but he dismissed it immediately. That wasn’t an option. It just wasn’t.

                Sans continued to examine the monster. “so, if you’re the prince then why are you here? shouldn’t you have inherited asgore’s magic and grown up after all this time? this is a little hard to follow, especially since so many people watched you die.”

                The monster gave Sans a calculating look, but said nothing.

                “He was brought back to life with a new body,” said the kid.

                “really? do people just grow replacement monster bodies in their gardens nowadays?”

                “Well, if you count flowers, then yeah, I guess they do.” A fragile smile touched the kid’s face.

                The monster stiffened. “ _Shut up, you idiot!”_

                “flowers? what color, if you don’t mind me asking?” Sans could feel his magic eye widening.

                “Uh, yellow. Why?”

                Sans nodded as everything fell into place. He turned to the monster. “so you were the talking flower that was messing with pap? the one that tried to kill everyone yesterday? looks like tori and asgore need to take some parenting classes. it’s a bad sign when both your children grow up to be serial killers.”

                The kid shifted the monster out of Sans’ line-of-sight. “It’s not his fault! He has no soul. He can’t feel anything.”

                “soulless? that’s a pretty lame excuse. you don’t have to _feel_ something to know if it’s right or wrong.” A burning sensation wormed through Sans’ head as he poured extra magic into his eye. “were you really about to combine these two, frisk? if i hadn’t shown up, would you have mashed these two killers together, crossed your fingers, and _hoped_ that something good would have come out of it?”

                “If I don’t hope, then no one will.”

                Sans scoffed. “come on, this is all a bit too optimistic, don’t you think? even for you…” He cobbled a Gaster blaster together with the dregs of his magic. The thing was deformed. The grin lacked a few teeth, and the skull was cracked all over. The act nearly sent Sans into pain spasms. He fought through it and straightened his spine. “put the fragment on the ground and step away from the monster, frisk. i won’t ask twice.”

                 The kid might as well have been made of stone.

                “Do what he says,” whispered the monster. “ _Don’t you dare!—”_ He grunted. _“_ Don’t worry about me. It’s better this way… for everyone.”

                “This will work, Sans.” The kid’s expression was stoic and unreadable.

                Sans began to charge the blaster. “i can’t take that chance.”

                “…Then I will.”

                The child slammed the soul fragment onto the monster’s chest. It strobed a violent red as it sank through the sweater and into the monster’s body.

                Sans roared and fired the blaster. It ripped through the air like a sine wave, ending in an erratic lightning bolt and striking the two figures.

                Light engulfed the cavern.

*****

                Asriel sat cross-legged on a featureless grayscape. It was completely flat and extended into infinity. He scanned in every direction, but didn’t see or hear anything, except for the faint echo of his own breathing.

                “Hello?”

                Nothing.

                The vacantness crushed in on him like a physical force.

                “Anyone?”

                He began to rub at his ears and rock back and forth.

                A voice cut the silence.

                “You still do that after all these years? Even though I gave you so much grief for it.”

                Asriel spun around and climbed to a kneeling position.

                A thin child with droopy, caramel-colored hair stood before him. He picked at the sleeve of his green and yellow sweater while staring at his feet. “Hey.”

                Asriel gawked for a full minute. “Chara?”

                “Yeah, it’s me, well… what’s left of me.”

                An impulse to touch Chara ran through Asriel. He had already risen to his feet and taken a few steps before he came to his senses. He stopped. “What is this place? Why are you here?”

                 “We’re in you, I think. Frisk probably came up with a dumb idea.” Chara looked around sheepishly. “It’s not quite like last time, is it? When we, um, when I…” The words died away, but a thought drifted towards Asriel like a wind-tossed leaf. … _Tried to kill those humans._

                The surface of the grayscape rippled and scenery materialized around them. They were suddenly in a black-and-white recreation of The Heart. Asriel spotted the twisted hulk of the destroyed harvester over Chara’s shoulder.

                Chara rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yeah, uh, this place. You’ve got a pretty vivid memory of it.”

                The grayscape rippled a second time, and the hills started burning. Screams filled the air. They were compressed and distorted, as if they were coming out of damaged speakers. A crowd of humans bloomed out of the fields and began to cower at the approach of an unseen antagonist.

                “I get it, Asriel. You don’t have to show me this.” Chara began to squirm.

                One of the humans separated itself from the group and held up a weapon.

                “Asriel, PLEASE STOP!”

                The hills, the fire, and the humans all liquefied and splashed down around their feet. The grayscape stilled like a frozen pond.

                Chara sat down and wrapped his arms around his legs. He closed his eyes and let out a long exhale. “That hurt a lot more than I thought it would.”

                Asriel smothered the urge to apologize and clenched his paws into fists. “What am I supposed to say, Chara? What am I supposed to do? Frisk said you’re a better person now, that all the time in the loops changed you. But that’s not how it works! Look at what time turned me into!”

                The grayscape undulated like hurricane waters. Hundreds of still-shot images of Flowey protruded from the waves and depicted his killings. A look of sick glee plastered his face as he impaled Toriel, Papyrus, Undyne, and nearly every other creature in the underground.

                Chara’s tired eyes scanned the waves as it all played out, but he said nothing.

                “Do you see?” Asriel whispered. “That is us. That is what we are. No amount of apologies or regret is going to change that. So answer me, do we even deserve to come back? This chance that Frisk gave us, do we even have the right to take it?”

                Chara rose and tilted his head to look up at the vacant, gray expanse. “No, we don’t. Things would be a lot simpler if we stopped existing.”

                “Then, should we just—”

                “I had this conversation not too long ago. I was on your side of things, talking to a stubborn kid. I explained all of this to him, tallied my sins on an invisible chalkboard. But he ignored it. Every word. All he said he didn’t want me to disappear. Because it would have been too sad…”

                Asriel’s shoulders drooped. “That’s a really childish way of looking at things…”

                Chara closed the gap between them in four brisk steps and crushed Asriel in an embrace. He buried his face into Asriel’s shoulder and leaked hot tears onto his sweater. “I’m so sorry I ruined your life. I turned you into a killer just like me.”

                By their own will, Asriel’s arms wrapped around Chara’s shoulders to return the hug. “I missed you. I was always so scared when you weren’t around.”

                They held the pose for a long time. Chara’s voice came out muffled and small. “It’s just not fair. For me to get another chance while you just fade away.” He relaxed the hug and pushed Asriel to arm’s length, looking him in the eyes for the first time. “Let’s go back. Together.”

                “What if it doesn’t work? What if everything goes wrong?”

                “If Frisk saved everyone once, then he can do it again, can’t he?”

                Asriel wiped his eyes on the back of his paws. “I want to believe you, Chara. So badly. Please…”

*****

                The grayscape bled away like ink soaking through a piece of paper. Blotches of reality peeked through, and the cavern slowly came into existence.

                A confusing jumble of sensations struck Asriel in quick succession. First came a feeling of fullness and warmth. It radiated from his chest and flooded his whole body. He looked down to see a pale, red heart glowing through his sweater. The second was the smell of burning ozone that permeated the cavern. Third was the kid’s touch. He cradled Asriel’s torso, and hunched his own body like a shield.

                The fourth was the sound of Sans’ screams.

                “no! no! why did you do that, kid! why! you didn’t owe them _anything_! least of all this!”

                Asriel looked into the child’s face. “Frisk?...”

                The kid’s body shook and he took his breaths in short gasps. Their eyes locked and he showed his teeth in a triumphant grin. They were stained crimson. A dribble of red darted from the corner of his mouth and down his throat. “I told you guys it would work. I knew. You just h—had to believe.”

                Life left him, and he began to slump to the ground.

                Asriel grabbed the child’s sweater and held him upright. It was then that he finally noticed the gaping blaster wound in the center of the kid’s chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me :)


	21. Chapter 21

               

                Sans continued to bellow into the empty air, but to Asriel the sound was muffled and distant.

                “why did you take their hit? why didn’t you stand aside? i don’t make idle treats, kid. you know that! and now you—” He made a strangled noise and ripped at the tatters of his shirt. “you can’t go back…”

                Asriel wrapped his arms around the child’s body and pulled him in close. Blood began to seep out of the kid, darkening both their clothes and puddling around their knees.

                He whispered into the child’s ear. “You were right. You were always right.”

                Sans stomped forward on unsteady legs and raised an accusing finger at Asriel. “why did you let him do that? that was meant for you! what happened to all your talk in the lab about frisk not deserving to suffer for your sins?!”

                Something terrible began to boil in Asriel; a feeling he hadn’t experienced in centuries. A force nudged him to the side of his mind, gently, but with no room for debate. His attachment to his limbs grew faint.

                A voice pushed itself through his bared teeth. “I don’t think I can forgive you for this one, Sans. It’s not the same as before. Back in the loops I was the one at fault. I’d take away everything you cared about. It was _fair_ for you to kill me, because every death was a little bit of penance. But now… what drove you to this? Was it the watch? Did all that fear really push you to destroy our only chance at happiness?”

                Sans slashed his arm through the air. “don’t give me that garbage about chances, pal! you had loads of opportunities to turn back. each time you raised your knife you had a chance to choose another path. now that you’ve slammed every door in your own face, you’re starting to sweat the consequences. well here they are! here—” He choked on his words.  

                Asriel tried to speak, but his throat didn’t heed him. He realized that _he_ was now the voice in the back of his own head. He sent a few urgent thoughts to Chara, but hit a brick wall of wrath.

                “Back in the lab I couldn’t kill you because deep down I believed I didn’t need to. That you’d be able to understand, that we’d all get our ‘happy ending,’” He spat the last two words. “I’d forgotten the killer intent, like back in the old days. But now that I know you aren’t going to stop… I think I’m starting to remember.”

                Asriel’s body pillowed the child’s head on a knot of flowers, lingering for a moment to close his vacant eyes. It rose to a crouch and tensed.

                “You’re _DEAD_!”

                His body rushed towards Sans at a dead sprint. It stayed low to the ground and closed the distance in seconds.

                Sans threw up a phalanx of bone spears, but they did nothing. Asriel’s body leapt over them and extended its claws towards Sans’ skull.

                In a flash of blue, Sans teleported away, but something wasn’t right. He collapsed to one knee and placed a hand over his left eye socket. “this all happened because i thought you were dangerous. that if we let you live, then one day you’d get bored, or something would set you off on another murder spree.” He laughed bitterly. “looks like i was right.”

                Asriel hurled himself against Chara’s mental wall and screamed inside his own head. Everything was out of control. It wasn’t like last time at all. It was as if his body was some vast machine, and he’d been locked out of the control room.

                Asriel’s feet padded forward, but he could barely feel them. There was a far-off popping sound and he noticed his paws had clenched themselves like talons.

                “It’s been a while, but I still know you. I’ve seen every move you’ll ever make a thousand times over.” The muscles of Asriel’s face tightened into a sneer. “You’re getting tired. You’re already at your limit. Even with a body as weak as this, I could kill you like a defenseless child! It’s appropriate, don’t you think?”

                Sans said nothing and pushed himself to his feet. The hand over his eye socket began to twitch and tremble.

                Asriel tried again to batter down Chara’s wall, but was instantly repulsed. A growl echoed through his head. “He’s gone too far, Asriel! I have to do this!”

                “Like back in The Heart!?” Asriel shot back. “You ‘had to’ do that, too!”

                A crack ran through the barrier. “This is different! Don’t you understand what he’s done?”

                His body made another lunge for Sans, but struck nothing. Sans teleported away, only creating about five feet of space. An expression of shock smeared his skull and he attempted to teleport again, but went nowhere. He merely flickered in place.

                Asriel’s body pounced and bore Sans to the ground. It snaked its arms through Sans’ ribcage and pinned his spinal cord between its claws. “It’s all ruined because of you! Now what kind of future does Frisk have left? A life as a soul fragment? Trapped in a two-way mirror of a host? Were you really so determined to make Frisk into me?”

                Sans went rigid and his hand slipped into his pants pocket. But a sigh filtered through his plastic smile and he grew limp. He rolled his head to glimpse the corpse across the room. It looked almost like it was sleeping, except for the swamp of blood forming under it.

                “you really are a cruel comic. but you can stop rubbing it in, kid. you know i didn’t want—i was—” His head rolled back to look at Asriel, and a crystal glimmer pooled in the back of his eye sockets. “just… just end it. i’m too tired for all of this…”

                Desperately, furiously, Asriel slammed himself against Chara’s wall. “Frisk wouldn’t want this! YOU IDIOT!”

                The wall suddenly gave way and Asriel found himself grappling with Chara’s essence. They screamed at each other like petulant children fighting over a toy.

                “Frisk is dead, Asriel! All he ever wanted was for everyone to be together! Now Sans killed that dream! And he’s not going to stop!”

                “Quit fighting and listen to me! For once in your life!”

                “Nothing you say will change anything! Sans stole my determination! I can’t fix this!”

                “But I _CAN_!”

                Chara froze. “What?”

                Asriel took his chance and pushed Chara to the back of his mind. He anchored himself into his body and climbed off of Sans. “I’m—I was Flowey, remember? I’ve always had determination.”

                Sans gave him a dazed look, and Asriel realized he had spoken aloud as well as in his head.

                “asriel?”

                “I can go back if you two let me. I can give everyone another chance.”

                Chara collected himself and whispered out of the dark. “Can you really do it? How far back will you go?”

                Asriel didn’t respond, since he lacked an answer.

                Sans did a double take to the corpse and ground his teeth. “saying ‘don’t, something could go wrong’ seems like a bad joke right now.” He forced himself to sitting position and grabbed Asriel by the shoulder.

                Chara quivered like a bowstring, but did nothing.

                “don’t tell the other sans-es. they won’t believe you.” His voice dropped to a hiss. “do it. do it now. and don’t you dare let me make this mistake twice.”

                Asriel closed his eyes and the world faded to black.

*****

                Asriel regained consciousness by increments. It started with a dull throbbing in his paws, and then an awareness of absolute stillness. There were no voices shouting accusations or the copper scent of blood in his sweater, no battle cries or sounds of violence.

                He didn’t want to open his eyes. He imagined that he was safe in bed and a vivid nightmare had just startled him awake.

                He took a long breath and relaxed his thoughts.

                A voice he thought he’d never hear again rasped out of the depths of his skull. _What did you just do!? Was that a reset? Explain! Now!_

Asriel’s eyes snapped open and vertigo flipped the world end over end like a coin. He waited for it to subside and struggled to a sitting position. A quick glance confirmed what he had already guessed. He was back on Chara’s tombstone. The reset had only been a few minutes.

                A horrible sensation clubbed him in the chest. He looked down and saw that Chara’s soul was gone. He had expected this, but it felt so wrong he thought he was dying. The remembered fullness from just moments before oozed out of him like he was a cracked egg. In three heartbeats he was back to being an empty shell.

                The voice spoke again, low and emphatic. _We were just here. You brought us back. But why? How?_

                Asriel ignored it and rose to his feet. He tottered dangerously, but stayed upright. He had to find Frisk and get Chara back, before Sans showed up.

                _You actually absorbed him? You really are nothing but worthless pity._

                He remembered the lip on the tombstone and took a long step. He began to traverse the room, managing to get halfway across before a hole in the ground caught his heel. He went down face-first into a cluster of flowers. He rolled onto his back to spit out dirt and petals for the second time, and checked his foot. It was badly twisted, maybe broken. He wasn’t sure if he should be happy that he couldn’t feel his lower half.

                _Answer me! How did you reset if Frisk is still alive? He should have control of—_ The voice grew silent as death.

                Asriel started to crawl towards the exit of the cavern. In just a few more moments…

                As if on cue, the child came barreling out of the gloom and skidded to a halt. He caught sight of Asriel and dashed over.

                “Asriel! Are you ok?”

                A thrill of relief flooded Asriel to see the child breathing again. He reached up to grab the child by the hand and ask for Chara back, but his voice didn’t work.

                He felt his face stretch into a painful smile, and a greasy sensation crawled up the back of his throat. _“So the timeline is mine again? Oh, this is going to be fun.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still hate me?


	22. Chapter 22

                Sans raced through the ruins, making graceless, scrambling leaps over the pitfalls and spike traps that crossed his path. Shards of pain forced themselves into his ribs with every step he took, but he didn’t slow. He had to catch the kid before he transplanted the soul fragment.

                He neared the end of a long hallway and attempted to round the corner with a slide, but the ancient tiles broke loose and slid with him. He went down hard and heard a crack like a percussion instrument as his head contacted stone. He was back up and running in an instant, despite the double vision that now forked the hallway in two.

                He dipped a hand into his sweatpants pocket and pulled out the watch. It took some time for his vision to settle on the number, but once it did, all coordination left his body.

                His legs hitched mid-stride and he started to go down again. On reflex, his arm shot out and searched for a handhold among the corridor’s time-scarred brickwork. He jerked to a halt and checked the watch again.

                2861.

                “no… no, that’s impossible. it isn’t even _possible_!”

                Sans tried to crush the watch in his bony fist and continued to shout at it, as if enough frantic words would convince it to revert to a lower number.

                “his determination is gone! i _extracted_ it!”

                He ran a hand over his other pocket and felt the angular lump of the portable DT extractor. Knowing it was there somehow didn’t alleviate his fears.

                Sans thought back to the last time he’d checked the watch. It had been 2805 just outside Snowdin. He was so shaken that he labored to do the simple math.

                “it doesn’t make sense! how has he looped fifty-six times already with zero determination?!”

                Sans restrained one hand with the other to keep himself from hurling the watch against the wall.

                _calm down…_ He told himself. _calm down…_

                He started walking again, working his way up to a jog, and finally a sprint.

                _i’ll fix this. i have to._

*****

                Asriel regained consciousness by increments. It started with a dull throbbing in his paws, and then an awareness of complete stillness.

                He bolted to a sitting position and blinked away the vertigo.

                Everything was the same.

                He rolled off Chara’s tombstone, rising to a standing position in the process. His legs felt like plywood stilts, but he managed to cross the cavern without incident. Every hole, rock, rise, and fall in the terrain was branded into his mind at this point.

                He reached the cavern’s exit and began moving down the corridor that led back towards the ruins.

                An involuntary whisper slithered out of his mouth. _“Tick-tock, Asriel. Tick-tock.”_

                He ignored it and took long, stiff-kneed steps. He knew that his legs would stop working in about fifty seconds, but that’d be plenty of time.

                Asriel caught sight of the child long before he could hear him. They waved desperately to each other, like always, and quickened their respective paces.

                They met at a roughly circular bulge in the corridor. A sunbeam pooled in the center like the stage light of a school play.

                The child swallowed in a dry throat. “—Asriel! Help! It’s Char—”

                “No time, Frisk! Give me Chara, now!”

                Asriel held out his paw in a pleading gesture, but the child shuffled a step back.

                “How do you already know about Chara?”

                “Please, give him to me now, Frisk!”

                Dread drained the color from the child’s face. “What’s going on?”

                _Time’s up._

                “ _You get three guesses.”_

 _“_ Have—have we done this before?”

                _“Ha!_ _You never do need all three. Now, can you guess your prize?”_

                Asriel felt a crooked smile spread from ear to ear, the same one that always happened right before—

*****

                Asriel regained consciousness by increments. It started with a dull throbbing in his paws, and then an awareness of complete stillness.

                Something warm began to dampen his face and crawl horizontally across his cheeks. He didn’t want to open his eyes. He was so tired of seeing the cavern spin like a Ferris wheel, so tired of reading Chara’s tombstone, so tired of hearing—

                _We’ve started already. You’ve got less than three minutes, now._

                Asriel leapt to his feet and took a step, fighting against the vertigo that always came with each reset.

                He lost.

                The ground lurched like one big conveyor belt, and he found himself on the ground in a heap.

                _Aw, that’s a shame. And you were so close last time. Just a few seconds too slow._

Asriel dug his claws into the soil and instantly regretted it. Pain knifed up his fingers and into his knuckles.

                “Liar,” he whispered. “I had twenty seconds left. I counted.”

                _Oh, you think so? Well I counted differently. We agreed on three minutes and ten seconds, remember? Giving you extra time would just be cheating._

Asriel pushed himself up and tossed a fistful of dirt across the room. “Why are you doing this?!”

                _What kind of stupid question is that? Because it’s fun, obviously._

                “But you’re trapped here too! What is this all for?”

                The voice adopted a mocking tone, like speaking to an infant. _In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I may control the timeline but we’re still stuck in YOUR save. I don’t have a whole lot of options here. It’s either this tombstone or wherever your true reset leads us. For all I know it goes back to when you were born._

                “Then do that! If you’re not going to let me save Chara here, then at least let me go back and fix my mistakes!”

                _Are you kidding? If we go back then I disappear. And if you absorb Chara here, then I get buried in your subconscious. After what Chara’s done to us, I’m making sure he doesn’t get a happy end, in the past OR the future. Besides, I can’t let a soft-hearted dope like you have control of things. I’m the only one in here with any sense._

                “You can’t do this!”

_You don’t seem to understand how much determination we have. We’re just going to keep looping, until time itself turns to dust._

“…But why?...”

                _I have to break you somehow, don’t I? There’s no way I can convince you to just give up and fade away. That’s why time is going to do it for me. Once you’re gone, I’ll be back to a flower… but at least I’ll have the surface as a consolation prize._

“That—that won’t happen… I would never—”

                _Careful about using ‘never.’ You say it now, but I’ve spent more time in these loops than anyone. Chara’s three hundred years are just a drop in the bucket to me. All this time has taught me two things: patience and that ‘never’ is a meaningless word._

                A dead weight collected in Asriel’s gut. He began to rub at his ears and rock back and forth. “You’re insane…”

                _Right now? No. It’s happened a few times, though. As a little friendly advice, the first one is always the worst._

*****

                Sans strangled a scream as he looked at his watch. He cocked his arm and launched it down the corridor like a live grenade. It ricocheted off the cracked bricks and into the dark.

                He immediately cursed himself for his stupidity and trudged off to retrieve it. He panted and pinched at his ribs as he walked. He wondered how many times he had chucked that hunk of metal down the hall.

                The whole world had gone insane while he was stuck on this treadmill. For the first time he supposed he was lucky that he never remembered any of the loops. It was a bitter comfort.

                As Sans recalled it, Gaster’s inventions had always either been indestructible or made of tissue paper, never anything in-between. He hoped the watch was the former.

                But it honestly didn’t matter if the thing worked anymore. It was useless without another digit.

                He spotted a metal gleam in one of the shadows and snatched it off the tiles. A scuff mark on one of the metal plates and a tiny crack in the plastic display were the only signs of damage.

                Sans glared at the numbers and a cold sensation filled his spine.

                9999.

                _the end of the road…_

*****

                Sans leaned against the arched portal that marked the end of the ruins and wheezed. He kept expecting the whole world to vanish without warning, but it didn’t. He steadied himself with a great breath and stepped out into the cavern.

                The scraps of a half-whispered conversation fluttered about the room.

                Sans noticed two figures crouched in the flowers, and approached them as quietly as he could.

                  It was the kid and a young monster—probably from Snowdin. Sans’ jaw grew tight once he saw the soul fragment in the child’s extended hand.

                He drew close enough to spot fine details and his feet rooted themselves to the ground.

                The monster was holding the kid by the forearm. Its claws had sunk through the sweater, and little patches of red were beginning to form. The kid’s face was locked in a grimace.

                The monster sat with its knees resting on the flowers and its head hung low. It stared off into nothing with dull, sightless eyes. Its mouth hung open, barely moving as it spoke, as if it took too much effort, or the monster simply couldn’t be bothered.

                “I said no, Frisk.”

                 “But why? I don’t understa—” A pained gasp rushed through the kid’s teeth. “Asriel, you’re hurting me. P—please stop.”

                “If I let go you’ll just try to force Chara on me… You always do… Then he’ll just reset again.”

                “Who is _he_? Who are you talking about?”

                “The one in here.” The monster used just enough energy to lift its free hand and touch its temple, then let its arm fall slack. “He doesn’t talk to me anymore, but I can feel him waiting.”

                “In your head?... Is it Flowey?”

                The monster didn’t move. Its pupils just quivered a millimeter to the left. “Shh. We’ve had this talk millions of times. Please, no more questions. I got tired of answering them years ago. Just sit here with me for a minute.”

                “We don’t have a minute! Chara’s going to fade away!”

                “Is that so bad?”

                “What!?”

                The monster blinked for the first time since Sans had laid eyes on him. “Everything fades away eventually, right? Chara lived a long time for a human. You don’t normally make it to three hundred, do you?”

                The child said nothing for several minutes. Blood saturated his sleeve and began to drip scarlet onto the yellow petals below.

                “…Then what are you going to do?”

                The monster released the kid’s arm and slowly forced itself to a standing position. It looked through Sans towards the cavern’s exit.

                “Maybe it’s time I faded away too.”


	23. Chapter 23

                “Get out of the way… Smiley Trashbag. I’m not going to talk to you.”

                The monster teetered to a stop a few feet in front of Sans and waited. Its eyes looked lifeless and fake, as if they were made of glass or plastic. They remained unfocused, simply staring through Sans.

                “…Since this is your fault to begin with.”

                Sans bristled. “my fault? look, pal. you can wander off and disappear if you want to, but nobody’s going anywhere until you explain!” He held up the watch. “who’s responsible for this? you? or the thing in your head?”

                The monster’s eyes didn’t even twitch towards the watch. “If I tell you, then you’ll just get mad and kill Frisk again.”

                Sans staggered like the words had been a physical blow. “if that’s a joke, then it isn’t funny… i would _never_ do something like that.”

                The corner of the monster’s mouth curled. “You know, after a while _never_ becomes a meaningless word.”

                Sans glared. “how long is a while, exactly?”

                The monster laughed, flat and joyless. It came out in a broken staccato that went on for an uncomfortable amount of time.

                It finally lurched back into motion like a rusted machine, walking a semi-circle around Sans towards the exit.

              Sans shot out an arm to catch a fistful of its sweater and dragged it to a halt. “i _said_ that nobody’s going anywhere.”

                “I won’t be anybody in a minute. I promise.”

                “what’s that supposed to mean?”

                It ignored him. “Frisk is going to pass out from blood loss in fifteen seconds.”

                Sans whipped back to look at the kid and finally noticed the milky pallor of his face.

                “You think you care about Frisk, right? Maybe you should do something.”

                Frisk hit the ground like someone had dropped a cinderblock on his back. His bloodied arm still clutched the soul fragment even though he had lost consciousness.

                “kid!”

                The monster spoke with disinterest. “Maybe you can reuse some of those bandages he’s got on for his arm. He told me you gave him those injuries, by the way.”

                Sans released the monster and dashed over to the kid.

                Once it was free, the monster shambled out of the cavern as if nothing had happened.

                Sans rolled the kid over and looked at his arm. It was bad. He wasn’t sure how much blood humans had, but losing this much this fast couldn’t be good. He emptied his pockets looking for something of use, but all that fell out were his keys, the watch, and the DT extractor. With some effort, he ripped his own sweatpants below the knees and made a few crude bandages. He wrapped them around the kid’s puncture wounds as tightly as he could and then propped the child up in his arms.

                He patted the child’s cheek “c’mon, kid. you gotta wake up. you gotta wake up!”

                The child’s chalky-white lips parted and he began panting. His eyelids rose and fell as he battled for consciousness.

                “…Sans?”

                “that’s right kid, i’m here.”

                The kid opened his eyes and muddled relief painted his features. “Sans…” It lingered for a few seconds before he seemed to organize his thoughts. He recoiled and tried to pull away, while shielding the soul fragment with his body.

                “No! Don’t!”

                “wait, i’m not gonna hurt you, kid. calm down.”

                The child squirmed out of Sans’ grasp and fell back onto the flowers. His pained noises and labored breathing brought a slow cringe to Sans’ shoulders.

                “you don’t have to worry. i just want answers.” He picked up the watch. “who did this? was it that monster? you called him _asriel_. do you mean _dreemurr?_ who’s flowey?”

                The kid didn’t respond. His eyes just widened sickeningly as he stared at the watch’s digits. “No… was it really millions?”

                “kid?”

                The child’s gaze darted about and his breathing became even more tortured. He settled on the DT extractor and snatched it off the ground. He staggered to his feet and whispered low in his throat. “I can still fix this, Asriel. I can.”

                The child trailed in the monster’s wake, moving in a drunken, serpentine pattern. He managed about ten steps before he lost his balance and toppled like a rotten tree.

                Sans was beside him again in an instant. “you have to talk to me, kid. does that monster actually have determination? why were you speaking to him? how do you know him?”

                The child tried to climb back to his feet using Sans as an anchor, but he failed over and over. Powerless tears began to trickle out of his eyes. “Help me… please. This can’t—” His head lolled to the side as consciousness left him a second time.

                Sans laid the kid against the flowers and put a hand over his chest to make sure he was still breathing. The rapid rise and fall of the kid’s sweater made Sans grind his teeth. “this isn’t enough to go on! i don’t get it!”

                The DT extractor slipped from the child’s limp grip. Sans gave it a hard look.

                _even if it’s the wrong choice,_ he thought to himself. _can things really get much worse?_

                He pocketed the extractor and turned to pursue the monster.

                He didn’t have to move far.

                The monster was still in the corridor. It moved with slow, arduous steps, as if each one took all its will to muster.

                Sans shadowed it, taking extra care not to clink his bare bones against the tiles.

                _millions, huh?_

                If what he’d managed to piece together was right, then this monster controlled the timeline, and it had reset the last few minutes _millions_ of times over. Why, he couldn’t begin to fathom, but he was certain of one thing. It had to end.

                _in all the loops i’ll only ever get one try. better make it count._

                The monster had come to a halt at a bulge in the hallway. A shaft of sunlight filtered down, making its white fur practically glow.

                It whispered to itself, and the acoustics of the place sent the sound rebounding back towards Sans.

              _“Finally finished with this place? All the useless memories, all the useless people? Don’t worry. You won’t miss much.”_ It shivered. “Yeah… I guess so.”

                Sans inched closer.

                _“I’ll spread some pain for you, at least. Make sure everyone gets their just desserts._ Why would I care about that? _Oh, yeah. You never did understand the idea of revenge.”_

                Sans positioned himself within teleporting range. Even with his depleted magic, he knew he could make it.

                “Just let it end… okay? _Sure, friend. Anything for you.”_

The monster suddenly turned and locked eyes with Sans.

                In panic, Sans struck. He teleported before the monster and jabbed at it with the extractor. The prongs dug deeply, boring two dusty holes into the monster’s chest.

                It looked down and hummed softly. It took a breath as if to speak, but didn’t. It simply looked back to Sans and donned a wan smile.

                Sans pulled the trigger.

                The shriek of the extractor filled the room, and Sans could feel the last dregs of his magic being pulled into the machine to fuel it.

                The monster’s smile washed away in a sea of fury. _“TRASHBAG! What have you DONE!? Are you really getting in my way now!?”_ It snapped its teeth every other word, as if it were trying to bite Sans in the neck. _“Decades wasted! No, NO!”_

                It grabbed the barrel of the extractor with one of its hands and started to tear the prongs out of its chest. _“I’ve waited too long! It’s my TURN NOW!”_

Sans tried to push back, but his body didn’t respond. His bones felt like they were cased in concrete. With no magic left, he was about as useful as a statue.

                _“I DESERVE this! It’s my turn! It’s MY TURN! IT’S—_ You don’t deserve anything.”

                The monster’s other arm shot up to the extractor and slammed the prongs back into its own chest. It let out a cough, and dust plumed from its mouth. “…Except maybe this.”

                _“You IDIOT! Don’t you get it?! This is what he did to that brat! He’ll take our determination, and then we’ll be nothing! NOTHING! We’ll crumble away!”_

The monster’s face grew placid. It sighed out a thin stream of dust, like breath on a winter day. “Everybody fades away eventually, right? Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me all these years?”

Its face began to contort with fresh rage, but it quelled it with a grimace. “Smiley—Sans… listen. Take care of Frisk… and Chara.” A brief flash of life entered its eyes. “All they wanted was a happy ending. This time… please… trust…”

The din of the extractor slowly died.

The light and color seeped out of the monster’s eyes. Its fur faded too, from white to a slate-gray. “Trust…”

It collapsed to the ground and grew very still.


	24. Chapter 24

                Sans stood over the fallen monster. His body screeched at him to fall as well, but he locked his legs and gritted his teeth.

                The monster lay in a half-fetal ball, totally motionless. To Sans it looked stone dead.

                The world didn’t reset, and each second that ticked by felt like bitter triumph.

                “who were you?... were you really—”

                An erratic scuffling sound began at the far end of the corridor, and Sans turned to track the painful progress of the kid. He moved along the wall at an angle, slanting himself to lean on it for support. Even from that distance, Sans could hear the kid’s rattling breath.

                Part of Sans wanted to dash over and carry the kid to safety, but another just wanted him to disappear. He knew what was going to happen. The kid was too damn determined for anything else.

                Sans willed energy into his legs, but they didn’t even twitch. He might as well have been a skull on a stick, for all the good his body did him.

He had his voice, at least. It boomed down the hall. “It’s over, Frisk. No more resets. We fixed it.”

                The kid kept coming. He left faint brushstrokes of red on the wall each time he braced his arm for another step. “Not yet,” he rasped.

                “i know what you’re thinking, kid. i can do the math. you were trying to get this monster to absorb your buddy, chara. then something went wrong, _very_ wrong.” He tried to gesture, but his arms hung uselessly at his sides. “this monster’s no better than chara was. it trapped the whole world in a prison of loops. so answer me honestly. is what you’re about to do really the right choice?”

                The kid quickened his pace “…Don’t have time...”

               Sans looked down to the monster. Color and substance continued to drain out of its body like a perforated bucket. Its fur, claws, and even the pink of its paws were all graying. Around its edges it began to flake away and disintegrate.

              “seriously, kid! what will happen if you do this? what guarantee do we have that this won’t come back to bite us?”

                The kid’s shout was more of a whisper. “There isn’t one! Alright, Sans. Is that what you want to hear?” The child pushed himself off the wall and hobbled forward. “I’m doing this. I _know_ it’s right.”

               “how can you possibly _know_ that?” Sans managed to slide his foot and shift his weight to half-block the kid’s path. “everything, and i mean _everything,_ has a consequence. how do you know what you’re trying to do didn’t cause this mess in the first place. because without your determination you’re as blind to the loops as i am!”

                The child’s voice grew querulous and shrill. “What about you? You don’t know, either! You’re always so sure about what _you_ do, but maybe this is your fault!”

                _you’ll just get mad and kill frisk again._

                The child took a few more steps and emerged into the sunbeam’s half-light. He pinned his bloodied arm close to his stomach and formed a cage for the soul fragment with his fingers.

                “stop it, kid. just stop right there.”

                _if you take another step, you’ll die horribly._

                The child kept coming.

                Sans roared. “i said STOP!”

                The kid seized up, and his panting sped.

                They exchanged looks for a long second.

                The kid seemed like he was about to fall apart. The bandage on his head had begun to unravel, and only the caked blood plastered it in place. His pants were torn, muddy, and damp at the bottom. But his sweater said the most. The right sleeve was bound with rags and dripping red. The left was rolled up to his shoulder to reveal a messy, patchwork bandage on his elbow. It was crusted and brown, just like his head wrap. He actually _peeled_ his right arm away from his stomach, leaving a blotch of crimson behind.

                The child looked past Sans to the monster curled up behind him. “No. If you want me to stop…” His voice fell to a murmur. “…you’ll have to kill me.”

                … _and kill frisk again._

                “no, this isn’t—don’t say that, kid. don’t make me—stop moving!”

                The kid hesitated in his step for a fragment of a second. But kept going.

                “the whole world is on us now, on what we choose to do! stop! or i’ll!—”

                The kid lifted his free hand and placed it flat against Sans’ sternum.

                The child’s voice was so quiet Sans couldn’t hear him. He just read his lips. “Please trust me.”

                _this time… please… trust…_

                Sans felt something prickle in his eye sockets. “i just can’t let this all have been for nothing. it has to have meant something, for _once_. please…”

                The kid’s pain-twisted face relaxed to reveal his blue eyes. “It will. I promise.”

                A self-deprecating chuckle flowed through Sans’ teeth. “after all this i’m still sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see how it plays out…” He managed a tiny nod. “ok, kid… i’ll trust.”

*****

                Asriel crouched on the grayscape and hugged his bent knees. It seemed like everything was finally coming to an end.

                The grayscape looked different from before, but that had been—he paused to tally it all—too long ago.

                The ground was cracked and fissured, like a mud field baking in the summer sun. Black, lightning bolt trenches extended out to the horizon in all directions. Periodically, a great snapping sound would fill the air, and a chunk of the scape would plummet into nothingness.

                Asriel stared between his feet, waiting thoughtlessly for everything to break apart and swallow him.

                Memory fragments swam beneath the surface of the grayscape like fish in an aquarium. They distorted and inverted as they moved across the cracks. One drifted before Asriel’s vacant gaze. It was a birthday party. He couldn’t remember whose. There was an oversized pie with seven candles sticking out of the crust. A blurry child wearing a blue party hat sat before it and drew in a huge breath. Two tall monsters flanked the child and made small, approving gestures. Their faces slowly gained focus as Asriel stared. His head began to pound as the image grew clearer. He could almost—

                The memory moved beneath a webwork of cracks and frayed apart into meaningless shapes and colors.

                A fresh thunderclap shook the grayscape and sent Asriel sprawling onto his back.

                A whole horizon of the scape fell away, leaving a yawning wound in space. The ground began to list towards it, like a sinking ship.

                Asriel could feel himself slipping, inch by inch, but he made no attempt to stop. It didn’t matter.

                “Are you just going to mope?”

                Asriel raised his head and caught sight of a blurry figure. He lowered his head again and said nothing.

                “I remember you’d always do this when we got in trouble.” Asriel heard shuffling sneakers. “When Mom would scold us, you’d lay around all day like a sack of flour, even if she didn’t punish us… Do you remember that?”

                Asriel closed his eyes and tried. “…No.”

                “Well… that’s okay. Time gets a little rough after a while…” The shuffling came to a stop and something sat down beside him. “So… has it really been that long? This isn’t exactly what I expected to see…”

                A single bark of laughter left Asriel’s mouth. “Decades, I think…”

                “Oh… So I guess whatever crazy idea Frisk cooked up didn’t quite go according to plan... Was it Flowey? …Sans?”

                Asriel started to respond with a snide remark, but a massive crash sent a nearby piece of the grayscape into the abyss. “…Yeah.”

                He felt a hand reach out to brush the underside of his ear. It tickled, but he didn’t even flinch. “Remember this? You were even more ticklish than Dad was.” He heard a tattered chuckle. “It made messing with you so much fun…”

                “No!” Asriel snapped. “No, I don’t!” The hand recoiled. “All I remember is that room, okay!? Everything else is gone, _dead!_ ”

                The figure shifted back a few inches and said nothing until another quadrant of the world had disintegrated. “I’m not really the sappy type, Asriel. You know that. Bu—”

                “I don’t, actually. Not anymore.”

                “—But you aren’t alone! I did it too. I know how it feels. Each loop is a perfect picture that you never forget, every detail getting refreshed with the resets. After a few thousand times they start to stack onto each other. And the old memories are just… buried under it all. But they’re still there! They aren’t gone. They aren’t dead.”

                “ _Thousands?_ ” Asriel’s laughter warped into something closer to weeping. “try _millions_! Millions of times waking up on your tombstone, millions of times listening to Frisk beg me to save you, millions of times hearing the voice in my head tell me to just give up and disappear… It hurts, Chara. I’m so tired of it hurting.”

                A segment of the floor ripped away like a strip of canvas, and the whole world tilted a bit more.

                Asriel began to slide toward the blackness. “…just so tired…” He made no attempt to stop himself.

                As he neared the precipice, he jerked to a halt.

                It was the figure. One hand clutched Asriel by the wrist, while the other had punched straight through the grayscape to create a handhold.

                Its words were low and earnest. “If anyone in the world understands what it is to be tired, it’s me. But I’m still here, aren’t I?”

                “I’m not like you. I never will be. Just let me go.” Asriel twisted his wrist in an attempt to break the figure’s grasp, but it was like a steel clamp.

                “LISTEN TO ME! I gave up once too! I wanted to close the book and fade away! But just like this, a dumb little kid _ordered_ me to keep living! Because he saw something in the future that I didn’t! So now it’s my turn! You’re not _allowed_ to die! Because I SAY SO!”

                The world exploded.

                A billion flashing shards of the grayscape filled Asriel’s vision.

                He was falling into infinite nothing.

                 “Asriel!” The figure gripped him by his sweater and held him in close as they free-fell. “I’m here! This time, I’ll always be here. No matter what happens or where we go.”

                Asriel’s tears flew off his cheeks and into the dark. “But Chara, I can’t even remember your face anymore!”

                The figure held Asriel’s head by the temples and looked him in the eyes. “One day you will. I promise.”

                Everything faded to black.


	25. Chapter 25

                Asriel regained consciousness by increments. It started with a dull throbbing in his paws, and then an awareness of absolute stillness. There was no thunderous cracking or ringing emptiness, no sad voices or sensations of falling.

                He didn’t want to open his eyes. He imagined that he was safe in bed and that a vivid nightmare had just startled him awake.

                The worst nightmare he could possibly have imagined.

                Terror tore through him, so intense that his chest hurt. He clamped his eyelids tighter and whimpered, too scared of what might be on the other side.

                A voice—gentle and weary—whispered in the back of his mind. **It’s okay, Asriel. You can look.**

                He cracked his eyes and beheld a room.

                It was small and carpeted. He spied Chester drawers, a wardrobe, and a toy box. It was dark, but an orange glow radiated from a nightlight shaped like a candle.

                He pushed himself to a sitting position and realized that he was lying in an actual bed. It was soft; he felt warmer than he had in decades. He covered his face with his bandaged paws and began to cry. He wasn’t sure if it was from relief or anguish, but he shook the whole bedframe.

                The voice spoke again, almost apologetically. **Big kids don’t cry, remember?**

                “Asriel! It’s okay!”

                He choked on a sob and went silent. He looked across the room to see a bed identical to his. A small body was buried beneath the covers. Its head poked out and was turned towards him.

                Asriel cleared the blur of tears from his eyes and looked again. It was Frisk.

                “You’re safe now… Everything’s… fine…”

                The nightlight illuminated the child’s face. It was furrowed with worry and unsettlingly pale. His eyes fluttered as if he were struggling against the tide of sleep. “You don’t have to cry… again… It’s alright… now…”

                Frisk’s head drooped back to the pillow and he lost consciousness. Asriel watched as he continued to shift fitfully, in some stubborn fight with his own fatigue. Frisk’s arms wormed their way free to clutch at his chest. A fresh bandage was wrapped around his right arm from elbow to wrist. Five dark spots had soaked through the cloth.

                Frisk’s breathing eventually slowed to an even rise and fall. It brought a bit of comfort, but Asriel couldn’t stop himself from picking at his own bandaged paws. Memories of the last loop swam so close to the surface that he could practically feel the way Frisk’s skin had given way under his claws. He shuddered and clenched his paws into fists. Pain bloomed in his knuckles, but it felt right. He deserved it.

                **Stop it. Were you even listening to him? He doesn’t care about that. He’s not going to hold a grudge, believe me.**

                Asriel relaxed his paws and hung his head. “I’m so sorry…”

                The voice sighed. **How long are you going to keep apologizing for things that aren’t your fault?**

                “But I—”

                **He won’t hate you. I promise… Just give him a smile when he wakes up. That’s all he’s ever wanted.**

Asriel sat very still, unable to sleep, but too afraid to stand up.

“Where?” he eventually murmured.

                **Home, Asriel. We’re home.**  

                “We’re…”

                He placed his paw on the soul floating over his chest. Red light and heat surged in response to the touch.

                **That’s right. We’re.**

                The shadow of a smile touched Asriel’s face. It was such a foreign sensation.

                **There you go.** Asriel felt a little nudge in his chest. **Come on. If you aren’t tired, then let’s look around. Watching you sleep’s been pretty boring.**

                Asriel’s legs freed themselves from the covers, but slowly, as if they were asking permission.

                “Okay,” he whispered, still clinging to his smile.

                The house brought an eerie sense of déjà vu. Every object Asriel encountered pricked at the back of his thoughts, but nothing dislodged. He stared at a picture frame of a tall, white-furred monster and its child. They wore matching robes emblazoned with some symbols. It hurt to look at their smiles and not understand why.

                **Anything?...**

                Asriel shook his head.

                **It’s alright. Give it some time.**

                Asriel crept through the halls, half-expecting something to leap out and devour him.

                **We aren’t in danger, you know. Nobody’s… No. Nobody’s going to hurt you. But, uh, if you really want to sneak, you should walk toe-to-heel and bend your knees… Control your breathing, too.**

                Asriel jumped as he caught sight of another figure slinking down the hall. He raised his arms defensively, and the figure did the same. They both held the pose for a few seconds.

                **…That’s a mirror.**

                Asriel blinked a few times and waved a tentative arm at the reflection. A heat of embarrassment washed across his face.

                Snickers echoed through his head, only making it worse.

                **Oh wow, you still do this. You blush so hard I can see it through your fur. Quick, get closer. Get closer.**

                Asriel looked at the monster face in the mirror. It had long droopy ears and sharp fangs. Two blotches of red peeked out from under its fur like roses in the snow.

The features and colors sent sparks arcing through long-dead memories. Asriel raised a hand and touched the reflection’s face.

                The snickers died down. **He remind you of anyone?**

                “The picture frame… That was me?”

                A swell of melancholy poured out of the soul on Asriel’s chest. **Yeah… you and Mom.**

*****

                “I would appreciate it if you were more forward with me about this, Sans. I have many questions, and this is hardly the time for jokes.”

                “right, sorry… guess my knock-knock game is off today.” Sans shifted in the over-sized recliner with some effort. His limbs barely heeded him. “it’s just a little hard to explain… not even sure if i’ve got the whole picture.”

Toriel sat on a cheap fold-out chair with her hands clasped in her lap. Her eyebrows hung heavy as she looked at Sans. “Anything you could tell me would be beneficial. What were you doing here? Why was Frisk so terribly injured? And my son—” She broke eye contact and stared into the fireplace. “How is my son…”

“hey! uh, do you mind getting me some tea? i could really use a cup right about now.”

Toriel closed her eyes for a long blink. “Of course, I am sorry. I do not mean to push you. I can see that you are very tired.”

                She rose stiffly and disappeared into the kitchen.

                Sans let out a haggard sigh. _what am i doing?_

                He rewound his thoughts like a VCR. The last twenty-four hours played back, ending on Toriel’s appearance in the ruins. The look on her face was burned into his mind. It was horror, but more than that. The accusation in her burgundy eyes made him squirm just thinking about it. He couldn’t blame her. She had stumbled upon him standing over two wounded, unconscious children. It must have seemed pretty incriminating at the time.

                It was a good thing she’d shown up, though. If she hadn’t come looking for them, then Frisk might have actually…

                He shook his head. _what am i supposed to say?_

                Toriel returned with a ceramic coffee mug, steaming with tea. She handed it to him without a word and resumed her seat. In the exact same posture, with the exact same expression. She waited for him to take a sip before speaking.

                “My child—Asriel—died very long ago. I am certain you have heard about it. Rumors in the underground tend to become legend, given enough time.” She leaned forward and placed a paw on Sans’ knee. “So please tell me, why is my child asleep in the other room? Whose soul is that on his chest? …How?”

                Sans rubbed at his eye sockets and stumbled through the start of a few sentences. “does—does ‘chara’ mean anything to you?”

                Toriel sat very straight. “Who told you that name?”

                “look, tori, i need to know about this, please. who was chara?”

                “He was my… second child.”

                “you had more than one?”

                “We adopted him.”

                “huh?”

                “He was human, the first to ever fall into the underground.”

A web of comprehension strung itself together in Sans’ mind, but he kept his face stony and impassive. He labored to find a tactful way to pose his next question, but couldn’t. “did he ever seem dangerous to you? were you ever afraid of what he might do?”

                “Dangerous? I asked you to cease your jokes, Sans. Chara was a good child. He was troubled, but he meant well…. up until he passed…”

                _can i even tell you?... should i?_

                 “what about asriel? was he—”

Toriel rose to her full height. “Stop. Are you telling me that that soul is Chara? That one of my children came back from the dead bearing the other on his chest?”

                Sans strained his neck to meet Toriel’s eyes. “well… yeah. i’d say something like ‘stranger things have happened’, but you asked for no more jokes…”

                Toriel spun on her heels and turned her back on Sans. She made for the children’s bedroom, but halted mid-step.

                Asriel stood in the hallway.

                Nobody moved or spoke for nearly a minute. Sans was the first, lowering himself from the chair and hobbling a few steps closer. “you’re quiet when you want to be.”

                Asriel locked his eyes on Toriel, seemingly blind to Sans’ presence. The soul pulsed, staining the fur of his neck with red light. He took a stumbling step forward, as if he’d been pushed. “…Mom? Are—are you Mom?”

                Toriel made a pained noise, but said nothing. She fell to her knees and engulfed Asriel in her arms. Her shoulders began to bob with inaudible sobs.  

                Asriel rested his chin in the crook of her neck and stared into empty space. Tears tumbled from his eyes and soaked his cheeks, but his face was totally blank. He stood stock-still, not returning the hug.

                An awkward sensation gnawed at Sans’ spine as he watched the exchange. Part of him wanted to tear the two apart and shout the kid’s sins into his face, but another wanted to leave the room and give them some privacy. In the end he just stood there, trapped staring at Asriel and the crimson light that spilled around the folds of Toriel’s robes.

                Toriel’s voice was strangled and small. “Is it really you?”

                Asriel half-mouthed a few words, but nothing came out. He squeezed his gray eyes shut for a moment, and they came back red. An expression crossed his face: surprise. Like a kid who’d been pushed onto a stage in front of thousands.

                Toriel spoke again, even smaller. “Please… tell me.”

                The child finally returned the hug, fierce and frantic. He winced as he grabbed fistfuls of Toriel’s robes and buried his face in her shoulder. His words came out muffled and choked. **“He’s here, Mom. He really is.”**

                The hug lasted for some time. Sans’ legs began to tremble from exertion, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

                The child lifted his head and finally looked at Sans. A lot was buried in those glistening, ruby eyes. Desperation. Fear. A silent plea. And something else.

Something like hope.

It was an expression he’d seen from Frisk countless times.

                _guess i deserve what i get, then._

                Sans shrugged and closed his magic eye for the first time in a long time. He pantomimed drawing a zipper across his mouth and throwing away the tag.

                _alright, kid. it’ll be between us._


	26. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For headcanon purposes, the time gap between Chara's fall into the underground and Frisk's fall was hundreds of years. That was a little snippet of info that was never explicitly stated, but is important nonetheless.

                Sans lowered himself onto a lawn chair beneath the old maple and groaned at a hard day’s work. It wasn’t quite noon yet, but it felt like a full day to him. He’d woken up early and made the kids breakfast, so he decided he was entitled to his customary mid-morning nap.

                He settled his skull against the scuffed wicker and did a slow survey of the neighborhood.

                It was quiet, like always. The suburbs of Frisk’s hometown were nothing if not sleepy. Rows of blocky, same-ish houses lined the streets and hid in the shade of enormous elm trees.

‘Idyllic’ was a word that often came to Sans at times like these. He hesitated to say it aloud—fearing he’d jinx everything and call down some catastrophe—but the word still lingered in the back of his head.

A jogger or dog-walker would occasionally appear on the sidewalk and offer Sans a nervous wave. Sans always donned a disarming smile and tried to be as non-threatening as possible. Making a good first impression was important. Especially considering how skittish most humans seemed to be.

                They were nothing like Frisk had first been, so fearless, so heedless of his own safety.

                Sans wasn’t quite sure why that was. Frisk never talked about his past, even after returning to the surface.

                Sans didn’t like to pry. The kid seemed happy enough with how things had turned out. No need to go digging.

A breeze picked up, eliciting a song from the porch’s wind chimes and setting the old maple’s branches in motion. They swayed gently and stamped Sans’ hoodie with a shifting patchwork of light.

                Sans squinted through the leaves at the sun and grinned. Even after months on the surface, it never ceased to fascinate him. He was drawn to the way that it crawled across the sky, constantly shifting from dawn, to day, to dusk.

It felt good to track time with something other than a ticking clock.

_oh, right._

                He rooted through his pockets and fished out a round, metal object. He held it up at arm’s length and let the light refract off its polished surface.

                It was a watch made of thin metal plates, precisely riveted to give it a smooth edge. A jumble of churning, copper gears spun in the center and kept a trio of hands in motion. A small four-digit bar, like an odometer, sat at the bottom. 0000.

                _like it should be._

                Sans’ first priority upon reaching the surface had been to reset the original watch. But the task had been borderline impossible. The routine that tallied the loops was hard-wired into the programming. It couldn’t be reset to zero.

Although Sans had kept telling himself that everything was fine, that he didn’t even need a watch anymore, glimpsing that 9999 made his vertebrae itch. How could he know the world was still in motion without some way to be sure?

 He had spent weeks on the watch, toiling alone in the rotten gardening shed he’d converted into a workshop. Pap, Tori, Asgore, Frisk, and the others had come to inquire about him, but they’d all gotten the same cold shoulder.

Eventually, Asriel had stopped by—looking a lot less lost than usual. He had offered Sans a red-eyed stare, and a fresh piece of pie from Toriel.

**“Having trouble? This is for you, by the way. Mom says you can have another if you come outside to get it yourself.”**

“thanks kid. one’s plenty.”

**“So, listen, Sans. This is, uh, Chara speaking, okay?”**

Sans had chuckled through his teeth. “you know, the eyes kinda give it away. monsters aren’t color-blind, you know. except maybe dog-monsters… not sure about that one.”

Asriel had seemed taken aback for a moment, but he collected himself. **“Well, then that makes things easier. I know what you’re doing. I spent a long time on the exact same thing. For, um… worse reasons. But I thought I’d save you the trouble. That watch can’t be reset. Gaster did it on purpose. I spent over a decade on that thing, and I couldn’t crack it, so…”**

Sans had rubbed at the base of his skull and sighed. “so, did ya bring any good news to soften the bad? Or is the pie my only consolation?”

 **“Wait.”** Asriel had cocked his head. **“Have you not found the schematics yet? He buried them in the watch’s code. He did that with all his inventions… How did you not know that?”**

“you’ve got a mean sense of humor, kiddo.”

 **“No really, look.”** Asriel had trotted over to Sans’ portable lab terminal and combed through the entirety of the watch’s code in a matter of minutes. **“See. Right here… It’s really not that hard to catch…”**

“you can be a little creepy sometimes, did you know that, kid?”

Asriel had laughed a little too long at that. **“I’m three hundred years old, Sans.”**

Sans shook his head to disperse the memory and shifted on the lawn chair. He drew the watch in close and flipped it over. The back plate was covered in a series of scratches, shallow and precise like an artisan’s cut. They linked together to form three brief words: _just in case_.

                Sans ran his thumb over them and mused.

                Asriel—or Chara, to be more specific—had carved them with a pocket knife right after they’d finished making the watch.

                Sans didn’t like to admit to himself—and certainly hadn’t done it out loud—but he couldn’t have made the new watch without Chara’s help.

                Despite all his fears, things had worked out—seemingly without him raising a finger. It had been months now, and nothing had gone wrong. Monsters were acclimating to the surface, tensions were low. Some monsters had even received free housing as a sign of good faith from the humans.

A paralytic twinge of shame still affected Sans from time to time. All his paranoia had only managed to injure an innocent kid and jeopardize this whole happy future.

                _good thing there was someone more stubborn then me…_

                Sans returned the watch to his pocket and stretched. A two hour nap seemed fair. It was Saturday, after all. The kids would do nothing but watch cartoons all day.

                He closed his eyes and imagined he could feel the warmth of the sun on his bones.

                Two hours quickly turned to five, and Sans woke in shadow. The sun had already begun its descent and was hiding behind the house’s chimney.

                Sans rolled his shoulders and considered the merits of an early bedtime. Pap was out for the day, so he wouldn’t be heckled about it.

                He shrugged and drew out the watch. Depending on what time it was…

                7699.

                Sans’ jaw went slack. He turned the watch left and right, making sure it was real.

                7699.

                Sans rocketed to his feet and roared incoherently. A surge of his magic tore branches off the elm tree and sent the lawn chair cartwheeling through the air.

                He stormed across the grass and towards the shed, clenching the watch in both hands as if he were trying to choke it to death. He kept glancing about, expecting rends in space-time to open up in the street or on the side of his house.

  1. _no. no! NO!_



                Sans kicked the shed’s door open, snapping one of the hinges. He stepped inside and the excess momentum sent the door swinging drunkenly to a close behind him.

                His magic eye was so bright he felt like a blue flashlight was strapped to the side of his head.

               Sans slammed the watch into the terminal’s port and stabbed at the keyboard with his fingers. Whatever this was, a glitch, a coding mistake, or something far worse, Sans would fix it. By _any_ means necessary.

                Black monospace text on a white background popped up on the monitor.

                Sans steadied himself by gripping the wooden workbench.

                **Total temporal anomalies: 0**

**Total timeline redundancies: 0**

Sans leaned in closer and squinted. “what?”

                Snickers and snorts filtered through the planks of the shed.

                Sans retrieved the watch and opened the door. The second hinge gave way and the door hit the floor with a clap.

                Two children, one human one monster, crouched behind a bush outside and quaked with suppressed laughter. The human had a brown mop of hair, and wore jean shorts and a striped T-shirt. His entire face was beet-red and he held both hands over his mouth. The monster was in much the same condition. Despite his thick, white fur, a flush of scarlet spread across his cheeks and down to his throat. The red soul that floated over his T-shirt seemed to pulse in unison with his snickers.

                “frisk… asriel…” Sans looked down at the watch. A calm inspection finally revealed the truth.

                “you did not just do that...”

                Sans peeled an expertly placed sticker off the watch’s loop counter to reveal the 0000 beneath. He crumpled the prank between thumb and forefinger and flicked it to the ground.

“…you’re getting dunked on.”

The children’s laughs died in their throats.

Sans could see the blue light of his own eye reflecting off their faces.

Frisk’s voice was tiny and fast. “It was a joke, Sans. You know, haha. Asriel said you’d think it was funny.”

Asriel wheeled on Frisk. “I didn’t say that! It was Chara’s idea!”

Asriel blinked. Red pooled into his eyes and they began to dart about, as if gauging escape routes. **“Well, you know, uh, it was actually… SCATTER!”**

The children shot off in opposite directions like jackrabbits.

“you kids are _so_ getting DUNKED ON!!!”

 

**_The End_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. It actually is. I'm more than a little surprised I was capable of finishing this thing. All the friendly feedback you guys gave me helped a lot with motivation. I hope it ended on a satisfying note for you guys. It seemed a little unfair for the story to take you on such an emotional roller coaster without having some sort of payoff. Hopefully this is an acceptable conclusion.
> 
> If you're reading this long after the story has faded from the front page, don't be afraid to leave a review. I'll always get them through email, and they're a pleasant discovery to find in my inbox
> 
> Thanks. I hope you had fun.... Oh yeah, and see you in the post-epilogue ;)


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